
Class, S 5-5\ 
Book W^S4 



GopyiightK^__>JL?:i^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PUBLICATIONS 



OF THE 



STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF 
WISCONSIN 



JOSEPH SCHAFER, Superintendent 



/ 
WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

GENERAL STUDIES VOLUME I V 



I 

A HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 

IN WISCONSIN 



BY 



JOSEPH SCHAFER 



PUBLISHED BY THE 

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 

MADISON 1922 



^-e^a., 






OOPTBIGHT 1922 

BY THE 

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OP WISCONSIN 



1600 COPIES PRINTED 



PAID POE OUT OF THE INCOME OP THE 
GEOEGE B. BUEEOWS FUND 



JAN -9 '23 v' 

HOMESTEAD PRINTING COMPANY. DBS MOINES. IOWA 






CONTENTS 



Preface xi 

CHAPTIE 

I. The Land 1 

II. Early Settlements 23 

III. Pioneer Origins 45 

rV. Pioneer Conditions 65 

V. Wheat Farming 81 

VI. Diversified Farming 97 

VII. Improved Livestock 112 

VIII. Lumbering and Farming 130 

IX. The Agricultural Eevolution 149 

X. Farm Life 165 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Page 

Wisconsin — Land Fertile and Fair Frontispiece 

The ElKng Eilson Home, Jefferson Prairie ; Griffith 

Eichards 52 

Casper Henry Meyer 53 

A Prosperous New England Farm 58 

Old Swiss Church, New Glarus 59 

Farm Home at East Winthrop, Maine; Farm Home at 
Bloomfield, Connecticut 62 

Old Home in Delaware County, New York; A Pennsyl- 
vania Farm Home 63 

The First Wisconsin Home of John Muir; A Typical 
Prairie Farm Home, 1850 66 

Home of William Wilcox on the Lemonweir ; First House 
in Whitewater 67 

Farm Home of John M. Clark, near Whitewater ; Previ- 
ous Home of John M. Clark 72 

A Typical Stone Schoolhouse; Wade's Halfway House, 
Greenbush, Sheboygan County 73 

McCormick's Reaping and Mowing Machine, about 1857. 88 

Case's Threshing Machine 89 

Early Pattern of Esterly Harvesting Machine; Old 

Cradle, or ''Cradle-Scythe" 92 

John F. Appleby's ''Knotter" 93 

Draft Horse Team 98 

vii 



An Early Substitute for Wheat on Wisconsin Farms; 
Shearing Time on a Walworth County Sheep Farm . . 99 

Elkanah Watson 106 

John Wesley Hoyt 107 

Paris — Durham, Owned by C. H. Williams; Bloomfield 
3d — Devon, Owned by Thomas Reynolds 116 

Prize Winning Spanish Merinos ; Blood Horse — King of 
Cymry 117 

Young Fremont — French Merino; Prize Winning New 
York Suffolk Pigs 124 

Richard Richards; Thoroughbred Horse — Swigert 125 

The Pinery 132 

A Northern Wisconsin Sawmill; Delivering Hay to the 
Lumber Camps 133 

A Partly Cleared Farm on Cut-over Lands; A Marathon 
County Farm 142 

A Hardwood Forest in Florence County ; A New Home in 

the North 143 

William Dempster Hoard; William Aaron Henry 150 

A Farm ''Spring House"; A Pioneer Household Cheese 
Press 151 

Hiram Smith Hall, University of Wisconsin; Professor 
Stephen Moulton Babcock and His Milk Tester 160 

Receiving Hour at a Wisconsin Creamery 161 

A Walworth County Family ; Residence of Henry Natesta, 
Bergen, Rock Prairie 168 

The Disappearing Rail or Virginia ''Worm Fence"; Sau- 
sage Grinder Made by a German Immigrant 169 

The Meyer Farm ; Hickory Hill Farm Home of John Muir 174 

An Up-to-date Farm and Farm Home, Polk County, Wis- 
consin 175 

viii 



MAPS 

Page 

Map of United States Showing Location of Wisconsin ... 2 

Geological Map of Wisconsin 4 

The Driftless Area of Southwestern Wisconsin and Ad- 
jacent States 9 

Original Areas of Prairie in Southeastern Wisconsin .... 14 

Distribution of Prairies in Western Uplands of Wis- 
consin 15 

Forest Map of Wisconsin 16 

Swamps of Wisconsin 20 

The Lead Region 25 

Counties in 1836 28 

Map of Wisconsin Showing Surveyors ' Townships, 1835 . 29 

Land Entries, Racine County 34 

Organized Towns, 1848 42 

Population, 1850 48 

Vermont and New York Canals about 1837 60 

Lines of Communication, 1844 75 

The New North 138 



IX 



PREFACE 



This volume is intended to serve two purposes. In the first 
place, it constitutes the general introduction to the Town 
Studies of the Wisconsin Domesday Book. In the second 
place, it affords a tentative sketch of the history of agriculture 
in this state, which it is hoped may prove serviceable until 
a more complete treatment of that subject shall have been 
made possible through the intensive local studies which the 
Domesday Book plan calls for. 

The work on Wisconsin rural towns {townships, many call 
them, but town is the technical designation), which has been 
in progress for about two years, had reached the stage where 
the data relating to twenty-five towns were ready to be cast 
in final form for publication. Then it was seen that the matter 
on each town could be treated in much smaller compass, and 
the whole series consequently published much more economi- 
cally, if there was a compreheusive sketch of the history of 
agriculture in the state to which on all general topics one could 
simply refer, instead of repeating such matter in the texts 
pertaining to the separate towns. With such a sketch to 
serve as introduction, the texts of the town studies can be 
shortened about one-half — no insignificant item when we con- 
sider the cost of paper and of printing. Accordingly, I pro- 
ceeded to write the sketch here presented, and found, as had 
been anticipated, that the data collected for the intensive local 
studies, although still limited in scope, were of unique service 
in this wider investigation. A volume of those town studies, 
twenty-five towns widely distributed geographically, includ- 
ing plats representing farms and farmers of 1860, is now in 
press and will be issued by the State Historical Society in the 
near future. Its publication will afford an opportunity of 
determining the various ways in which such a microscopic 

xi 



historical survey of local areas may help to advance the cause 
of history. 

The history of agriculture in Wisconsin is believed to pos- 
sess so much inherent interest to Wisconsin people, that the 
publication of this sketch as a separate volume, of moderate 
size, is fully justified. To the full extent of the present edi- 
tion, it is thus made immediately available for the use of 
libraries, farmers ' clubs, schools, and individuals in both pub- 
lic and private stations. 

I desire to make emphatic my description of the present 
volume as a sketch of the history of agriculture. No claim of 
finality in the study of that subject is made, and I am well 
aware that the rigorous exclusion of many sub-topics which 
others would have stressed in writing a similar work would 
subject this book to criticism, were its claims less modest. I 
had in mind to write down, in minimum space, just those 
things which would be most useful in connection with the local 
studies for which the book is the background. A number of 
topics, like lumbering, railway building, mining, manufactur- 
ing, commerce, and labor, have been treated with relative com- 
pleteness by Frederick Merk in connection with his admir- 
able study of the Economic History of Wisconsin during the 
Civil War Period, which was published by this Society as 
Studies, Volume I. For the present, and until more complete 
studies of the same topics for the entire period of Wisconsin's 
history can be undertaken, those portions of Merk's book 
which deal with them will serve the highly useful purpose, in 
conjunction with this history of agriculture, of underpropping 
the Town Studies. Other topics, as for example agricultural 
education, agricultural organization, agricultural finance, call 
for such extended special investigations that for practical 
reasons their treatment had to be deferred to a later time. 

The bequest by the late Senator George B. Burrows of the 
major part of his estate to the State Historical Society, which 
has power to employ the income thereof for purposes of this 
nature, enables the Society to publish the present volume and 

xii 



also to begin the publication of the series of volumes contem- 
plated under the title of Town Studies. The Town Studies^ 
since the various processes involved in their preparation are 
now fully worked out, can hereafter, it is hoped, appear at the 
rate of several volumes per year. General studies, analogous 
to the history of agriculture, will also appear from time to 
time. 

I wish to acknowledge the assistance rendered me, in 
connection with the preparation of this work, by Edna 
Louise Jacobson, the Superintendent's secretary, who per- 
formed valuable research and compilation work on phases of 
the study and put the manuscript in shape for the press ; to 
Mary Stuart Foster, of the Library staff, who prepared 
the maps ; and especially to Dr. Louise Phelps Kellogg, senior 
research associate, whose careful reading of the entire manu- 
script has added materially to the value of the book. 

Joseph Schafee. 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 
November, 1922 



XUl 



CHAPTER I 
THE LAND 

The imposing geographic arch formed by the Mississippi 
lands on the one hand and those of the Great Lakes and the 
St. Lawrence basin on the other has for its keystone the ter- 
ritory embraced within the boundaries of Wisconsin. Resting 
lightly on Lake Superior but with a long shore line on both 
Lake Michigan and the Father of Waters, that territory also 
holds the most convenient line of communication between the 
two systems, the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, separated by a 
single short portage. This explains why so much of the early 
history of the state not only connects but mingles and blends 
with the French history of Canada and Louisiana, while its 
Indian lore holds in one all-embracing story the traditions of 
the Winnebago, the Six Nations, the Hurons, the Menominee, 
Potawatomi, Sauk, Foxes, Chippewa, and the Sioux. 

Wisconsin, on the small-scale physiographic map of the 
United States here reproduced (Fig. 1), seems abnost feature- 
less so far as surface is concerned. A little less than one-half 
its total area, the northern and northwestern portions par- 
ticularly, is shown to have an altitude of between 1000 and 
2000 feet, while the southern and eastern portions lie at an 
elevation of less than 1000 feet. A few small tracts in each 
of these divisions vary from the mass. There is no land in 
the state that rises above the 2000-foot limit or falls below 
that of 500 feet. 

From such indications one might infer that the land of Wis- 
consin is a vast, uniform plain-land like that of Illinois to the 
south or of Iowa to the west. But a closer examination of 
surface characteristics shows this to be an error. Wisconsin 
has a topography which, within the elevation limits specified, 
is very attractively diversified. This is brought out in a meas- 



2 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

ure by the large-scale relief map of the state (see pocket map). 
It represents along the Mississippi a belt of unequal width, 
narrower at the north and broader at the south, which is 
much divided and dissected by eroding streams — a genuinely 
** hilly" land. In the middle and northern portions are iso- 
lated ranges, ridges, and hills which stand out conspicuously 
— like Penokee Range, Flambeau Eidge, Barron Hills, Rib 
Hill, and McCaslin Mountain — with innumerable inequalities 




FICx. 1. MAP OF THE UNITED STATES SHOWING THE LOCATION OF 

WISCONSIN 
Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey 

not distinguished by special names. Even the southeast por- 
tion of the state, the plain-land par excellence, has only re- 
stricted areas where the surface is flat. For the most part 
it is rolling and uneven, with well defined depressions con- 
trolling the flow of the water courses in addition to numerous 
lakes, ponds, and marshes. The lakes of northern and north- 
western Wisconsin, also, are an impressive feature of the 
topography. 



THE LAND 3 

There is but one large area which from the map one rightly 
judges to be flat. It lies on both sides of Wisconsin River 
nearly in the form of an equilateral triangle, with one angle 
on the river near Kilbourn, another on the boundary of the 
Drif tless Area east of Stevens Point, and the third about the 
same distance east of Black Kiver Falls. This region em- 
braces most of Adams and Juneau counties, with smaller por- 
tions of Wood, Portage, Jackson, and Monroe, and a wedge- 
shaped slice of Waushara. Yet, even within that generally 
undiversified region occur the castellated rocks near Camp 
Douglas, Necedah Hill, and other interesting features of sur- 
face relief. 

If, with the geologist, we penetrate beneath the mantle of 
soil to bedrock, which is the foundation of the land, we find 
underlying Wisconsin a series of varying rock formations. 
The principal ones of these have been described as crystalline 
(or Archean) rocks, upper Cmnhrian (Potsdam) sandstone, 
and limestone (the last-named of several distinct kinds). The 
accompanying map (Fig. 2) shows the state divided geologi- 
cally into three main provinces determined by the prevailing 
character of the foundation rock, as follows: First, occupy- 
ing nearly the whole northern part and extending down some- 
what below the latitude of Green Bay, especially in Waupaca, 
Wood, and Portage counties, is the region of crystalline rocks ; 
second, sweeping around this on the south, west, and east, and 
extending south well below the great westward bend of the 
Wisconsin, also along the river valley, is the region in which 
the bedrock is upper Cambrian sandstone ; third, the portions 
of the map shaded deeper, namely, the whole of the eastern 
part of the state, the southern part, and areas along the Mis- 
sissippi separated by stretches of upper Cambrian, represent 
the limestone sections of the state. 

The three kinds of limestone are represented by three dis- 
tinct ways of parallel-lining (or hatching) the map. Where 
the lines are drawn northwest and southeast the rock imme- 
diately below the soil is the Niagara limestone. This lies on 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



GEOLOGICAL /AAP 



WISCONSIN 




FIGURE 2 
Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey 



THE LAND 5 

top of other formations from the lake to the ridge escarpment 
shown as running from the south line of the state to Green 
Bay and along the southeast shore of the bay. From that line 
westward the Niagara has been removed by erosion, and so 
we come to the next lower distinct limestone formation, which 
is called the Galena-Blackriver {Galena-Trenton) and is rep- 
resented by lines drawn northeast and southwest. A still 
lower deposit of limestone appears under the soil wherever 
both the Niagara and the Galena-Blackriver have been worn 
away. This is called lower magnesian limestone. The symbol 
for this formation is the horizontal ruling. It is seen as a 
narrow belt running on the south side of Wisconsin River 
from its mouth to the great bend, and northeastward to the 
Michigan boundary, with islands and headlands of the same 
formation in the south central counties and several large but 
interrupted masses north of Wisconsin River. The most 
prominent single mass of lower magnesian is the one which 
underlies the counties of Pierce and St. Croix. Both north 
and south of the Wisconsin the lower magnesian is in many 
places, especially along the streams, worn through so that the 
upper Cambrian sandstone, which underlies it in turn, appears 
as the bedrock. The blotches of white shown on the map rep- 
resent the St. Peter sandstone, which is a thin layer usually 
found lying between the Galena-Blackriver and the lower 
magnesian. The St. Peter is soft, and in most places where 
its protecting cover of Galena has been removed it has also 
been eroded away. But occasionally it remains as the forma- 
tion just beneath the soil over considerable areas, as in parts 
of Rock, Green, Jefferson, and Dodge counties in the east, 
also in Vernon near Wisconsin River, and in Pierce and St. 
Croix in the north. 

All of these rock formations except the crystalline are regu- 
larly stratified, suggesting that they are the results of sub- 
marine activity in rock building. The limestones, it is sup- 
posed, were made by a process of consolidation from the ooze 
which forms on the sea-floor and which often includes a vast 



6 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

amount of calcareous material derived from the shells of sea 
animals. In the area of crystalline rocks are found intruded 
masses of volcanic origin which perhaps formed the basis of 
one-time mountains, now eroded down until the area is nearly 
a plain — what is called by geographers, a peneplain. 

One of the main forces which affected the Wisconsin region 
in recent geologic times, tending to even the surface, to fill the 
valleys and plane down the ridges, incidentally forming lakes 
and marshes, changing the courses of streams, etc., was the 
great continental glacier. It moved over the whole state 
(except one section to be described later), retreated, advanced, 
retreated and advanced yet again, before it was finally forced, 
by the moderating climate, to retire into the far north. When 
the glacier had done its work, the surface of Wisconsin was 
approximately as we know it today. Vegetation came for- 
ward as the climate grew milder, and conditions gradually 
became suitable for animal and human life. 

For preparing Wisconsin to be the abode of a great civiliza- 
tion the glacial action was significant in several ways. It 
tended to ''iron out" the rougher, hilly surfaces; it made the 
flat lands more rolling by creating elevations of glacier-borne 
materials upon them; it made soil and distributed it over 
vast areas. As the glacier moved athwart the ridges it acted 
like a colossal earth planer, carrying with it their rounded 
tops, dirt, loose rocks, and rock strata often to the depth 
of many feet, depositing part of this material in adjacent 
depressions and carrying the rest farther.^ The result was a 
rolling terrain where formerly were high hills and deep val- 
leys. In that manner much of what otherwise must have been 
waste land, because of being too steep and rugged for culti- 
vation, was modified by the glacier into cultivable surface. 
Admirable examples of this process are available in south- 
western Wisconsin where the Driftless Area, which was never 

* There is limestone, as we have seen, both in the glaciated and in the unglaci- 
ated lands. But limestone caves occur only in the unglaciated, running down into 
the rock formation often many feet. It is believed that the glacier, wherever it 
passed, disturbed the rock formation deeply enough to erode the cave-bearing 
upper portions. 



THE LAND 7 

invaded by the ice sheet, joins the drift or glaciated region. 
The proportion of waste land in the Driftless Area is much 
higher on the average than in the drift. This is true notwith- 
standing that the glacier, in one way, created waste land by 
making lakes, ponds, and marshes through the uneven grading 
of valleys or by scooping and gouging out rock masses. It 
has been said that the glacier must be held responsible for 
most of the 2,500,000 acres of marsh land in Wisconsin.^ 

For the purpose of agriculture it was almost as fortunate 
that the flat lands were made more uneven as that the rough 
lands were made more smooth. A gently rolling surface 
affords natural drainage, for the want of which much flat land 
becomes waste in unfavorable seasons. Besides, the glacial 
hills and hillocks — the moraines, drumlins, kames, and eskers 
(to borrow the geologist's terms) — diversify the surface, vary 
the tree growth, and account for much of the natural beauty 
for which Wisconsin is so justly famed. 

The soil, which in most places covers the bedrock, is called 
residual when it has been made "on the spot" out of the na- 
tive rock by the process of weathering. It becomes alluvial 
when produced by stream deposition; and when laid down, in 
fine particles, by the wind it is called loess. The above are the 
principal soils, classified according to derivation, which are 
found in unglaciated (driftless) regions. But wherever the 
glacier has passed over a given surface its single agency in 
producing and distributing soil has usually been superior to 
all others, and the soil of the region is called glacial, or drift, 
soil. These terms do not mean that the glacier necessarily 
made all there is of the soil, for the process of weathering and 
the other processes have been going forward and producing 
results both before and since glacial times. But the glacier 
has affected the soil wherever it passed. In the first place, it 
carried with it, often for hundreds of miles, some of the soil 

* Much of that land, however, need not remain waste. A part of it could be 
drained by individual farmers whose farms embrace small tracts of it, and some- 
times extensive tracts could be drained by the cooperative method, under a law 
for creating drainage districts. When drained and properly subdued by culti- 
vation, most of the marsh lands become exceptionally productive. 



8 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

material which it spread over Wisconsin rock formations. 
Secondly, it ground up much native rock and spread it over 
the surface in the vicinity. And in the third place, it mingled 
together materials from various sources before they were 
finally deposited where they could grow the crops of our own 
day. 

It has been estimated that seventy-five to eighty per cent 
of the soil in most glaciated localities in Wisconsin was de- 
rived from materials of the neighborhood. The rest may have 
been carried great distances. No doubt Wisconsin has much 
soil which originated in the Canadian provinces. Certainly 
many of the bowlders which were carried in the glacier and 
dropped here and there as drift over the whole glaciated 
area are properly assigned to the rock formations of a far 
northern latitude. 

Sometimes the twenty or twenty-five per cent of soil derived 
from a distance becomes an exceedingly important element, as 
in a region which is underlain by a sandstone formation the 
soil of which is too light, porous, and deficient in plant food 
to possess high fertility. Thus the mixing of material derived 
from the crystalline rocks and from the limestones with the 
soil native to the great upper Cambrian region in middle 
Wisconsin rescued a large share of that region from compara- 
tive poverty. The largest continuous body of light sandy soil 
in Wisconsin is in the flat triangle described above, which 
begins near Kilbourn on the river and extends northeast and 
northwest to the neighborhoods of Stevens Point and Black 
River Falls. But that is precisely the portion of the upper 
Cambrian region which received no glacial drift and, except 
immediately along the trench of Wisconsin River, no river 
drift or alluvium either. Its soil is weathered sandstone. To 
the east of the triangle are several counties whose bedrock is 
the same, but having been visited by the glacier and gener- 
ously treated to a portion of its load of silt brought from the 
north and east, their soil, while still light, is much more fertile. 
Besides, the glacial hillocks diversify their surfaces. To the 



THE LAND' 9 

west of the triangle is a territory of considerable size, resting 
on the upper Cambrian formation, to whose lower valleys far- 
flowing rivers have carried silt from the north, which mingling 
with the sand makes a productive soil. What sand was carried 
down from the middle region over the limestone farther south 
served generally, by mixing with the stiff clay of that region, 
to improve its soil there. 




10 ZO 40 60 80 100 120 MILES. 



FIG. 3. THE DEIFTLESS AKBA OF SOUTHWESTERN WISCONSIN AND 

ADJACENT STATES 

Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey • • 

As already stated, there is one large section of western 
Wisconsin which (with adjacent portions of Illinois, Minne- 
sota, and Iowa) was unvisited by the glacial ice sheet— rth^ 
Driftless Area. This region is in character like parts of the 



10 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

South to which the glacier did not reach, but as a northern 
land it is unique from the fact that it forms an island of un- 
glaciated land in a vast sea of glaciated. The continental gla- 
cier, geologists have decided, split somewhere in the north- 
western part of the state, one lobe driving for a time south- 
westward and the other southeastward, thus missing the area 
in question. At one or more periods other forces finally 
brought the two lobes together again. This behavior on the 
glacier's part was so striking as to make Wisconsin's drift- 
less area a subject of interest to geologists the world over. 
The map (Fig. 3) will show the relation of that area to the 
rest of the state, also to the neighbor states. Its surface is 
estimated to include 15,000 square miles (about the size of 
Denmark), of which 13,360 are in Wisconsin. It is wider in 
the north and narrower in the south. The Wisconsin counties 
of Grant, Lafayette, Iowa, Crawford, Richland, La Crosse, 
Monroe, Juneau, Jackson, Vernon, and Trempealeau lie within 
the Driftless Area, while Green, Dane, Sauk, Portage, Wood, 
Marathon, Buffalo, and Eau Claire are partly driftless and 
partly glaciated. 

By comparing the last map with Fig. 2, it is seen that the 
Driftless Area embraces a large territory underlain by the 
Galena-Blackriver limestone in the southwestern counties, 
while north of Wisconsin River the formations beneath the 
surface are the lower magnesian limestone, the upper Cam- 
brian, and the crystalline, with some patches of St. Peter 
sandstone. The character of the country has been influenced 
the more by these rock formations because they do not lie 
quite horizontally but rise gradually toward the west and 
the north (though again sinking somewhat toward the Missis- 
sippi), making a large portion of the Driftless Area an uplcmd. 
Its elevation varies from 1280 to 900 feet, while the lands 
nearer Lake Michigan are about 700 feet above sea level and 
those in central Wisconsin still lower. The larger rivers, es- 
pecially the Mississippi and the Wisconsin, have eroded deep 
trenches, cutting through the limestone formation and well 



THE LAND 1 1 

down into the upper Cambrian sandstone. The ridges along 
the Mississippi sometimes attain a height of 500 feet, which is 
one measure of its cutting, while the hills on both sides of the 
Wisconsin in its lower reaches are nearly as high. 

Because of these deep river trenches, the smaller streams 
flowing into the Wisconsin and the Mississippi from the west- 
ern upland have likewise dissected the land deeply. Wherever 
these streams flow parallel to one another and near together 
the upland is much cut up and the bluffs are rounded. Some- 
times the latter are worn down to the hog-back form, or 
even reduced to mere flattened watersheds. But mostly the 
streams have eroded deep valleys, the lower courses of which 
are partly filled with alluvium brought from higher up, and 
the bluffs vary in elevation from about 400 feet near the 
streams' junction with the great rivers to a few feet at their 
head-springs. The soil in these valleys, for the most part, is 
of limestone origin, though sand from the upper Cambrian 
formation, often cut into by the streams, is mingled therewith. 
The tops of the ridges are covered with weathered limestone, 
save where this has eroded away to the limestone bedrock. 
In places outcrops of St. Peter sandstone are left on the high- 
lands. 

There are no lakes in the Driftless Area and very few 
marshes, the drainage almost everywhere being complete. 
Creeks, rivulets, and rills uniting with each other and joining 
the main stream make a very perfect tree-like (dendritic) river 
system. In the older, lower portions of the valleys the streams 
flow sluggishly through the alluvial deposits of silt, while in 
their upper courses they are always swifter and sometimes 
have the character of mountain torrents. There they still are 
cutting trenches in the limestone or St. Peter sandstone, while 
every freshet carries down and distributes over the lowland a 
quantity of fine silt abstracted from the upland clays. 

The steep sides of the bluffs in the Driftless Area usually 
appear, from a distance, to be parallel-lined by the exposure 
of rock strata. Sometimes, when more rounded, they are cov- 



12 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

ered thinly with soil and grow grass and trees successfully. 
The tops vary in character from the useless hog-back to fine, 
spacious levels capable of being cultivated and made into ex- 
cellent fields. In some portions these are called ridge fields.^ 
They are reached by steep ridge roads built along the sides 
of the ravines from the lowlands. 

That portion of the Driftless Area which lies south of the 
Wisconsin is sometimes said to be divided by the ''Military 
Ridge." It is more exact to say that the streams flowing 
north to the Wisconsin have deeply eroded the upland toward 
the river, reducing it to a succession of valleys and bluffs 
reaching back in some places only four or five miles, in others 
as much as thirty miles. There is also a series of south 
flowing streams which have eroded the surface far less deeply 
and usually flow at greater distances from one another. These 
south flowing streams have their sources near those of the 
north flowing streams, and the watershed between them is 
what is known as the Military Ridge.^ This ridge, with a 
considerable body of land on its southern and northern slopes, 
was one of the notable prairies of southern Wisconsin. It 
reaches practically from near Prairie du Chien to the Four 
Lakes region. 

The southern part of this region differs widely from the 
northern. In the north the valleys are the more important, in 
the south the ridges. This is due to the comparative narrow- 
ness of the southern valleys and the width and flatness of the 
lands between. A comparison of the Pekatonica region with 
the Blue River region will make the difference clear. One 
thinks of the former as a part of the plain country, which it is ; 
the latter is distinctly a part of the hill country. The Peka- 
tonica is a land with a stream flowing through it to furnish 
water and power. The Blue River is a valley made and domi- 

' These ridges grew wheat successfully for some years after that cereal had 
ceased to be grown on the lowlands. 

* Because the United States Military Eoad from Forts Howard (Green Bay) 
and Winnebago (Portage) to Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) was built in 1835 
along the top of this ridge. It is now the line of a branch of the Chicago and 
Northwestern Eailway. 



THE LAND 13 

nated by a river system. The ridges between the south flowing 
streams are all extensive, sometimes eight or twelve miles 
wide; the ridges between Blue River and the Fennimore are 
so narrow as to show but little flat surface, while the best of 
the north trending ridges are only two or three miles in width 
and much of their surface is uneven, often steep. On the 
Military Ridge and portions of its slopes appear certain very 
fine silt loams supposed to have been deposited by the winds 
and called loess. These loams are generally mingled with 
weathered material. 

Whether the whole of Wisconsin was at some time or times 
covered with forest growth we do not certainly know. But 
between the several advances of the ice sheet there was always 
time enough for soil to be prepared and for forests to spring 
up. A buried forest found in Manitowoc County and the 
lower Fox River valley^ is proof at least that such a growth 
occurred between the second and third glacial advances in that 
region. The remains consist of "logs, branches, and upright 
stumps. ' ' 

When settlers began to arrive in Wisconsin they found the 
southern part of the territory divided between forest and 
prairie, the former predominating.^ The two maps, Figs. 4 
and 5, show how these features were intermingled.'^ These 
forests are described as either maple, pine, or oak, according 
to the kind of tree which predominated in a given area (Fig. 
6). The principal maple area stretched northward from the 
south line of the state, along Lake Michigan to Green Bay. It 
was a narrow belt through Kenosha and Racine counties, but 
widened out across Milwaukee, Waukesha, and (^Jefferson 
counties, and occupied most of Ozaukee, Dodge, Fond du Lac, 
Winnebago, Calumet, together with portions of Sheboygan, 
Brown, and Outagamie. This forest, with the lower Fox River 

' Lawrence Martin, The Physical Geography of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Geological 
and Natural History Survey Bulletin No. 36, Madison, 1916, 253-254. 

' The question of the origin of the prairies is still unsolved. Probably forests 
covered the land fully at one time, and the absence of timber anywhere may be 
taken as proof of its destruction (1) by fire, or (2) by root boring insects, leaf 
destroyers, or other pests. 

' Martin, op. cit., 126, 277. 



14 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 




FIG. 4. THE ORIGINAL AREAS OF PRAIRIE SHOWN IN WHITE IN 

SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN 

Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey 



THE LAND 



15 




FIG. 5. THE DISTEIBUTION OP PRAIRIES SHOWN IN WHITE IN THE 

WESTERN UPLANDS OF WISCONSIN 
Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey 



16 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Conifers, wirh 

some mixed hardwoods. 







FIG. 6. FOKEST MAP OF WISCONSIN 
After Wisconsin Geological Survey, 1882 



THE LAND 17 

and Green Bay, enclosed a flattish triangle of land fronting on 
Lake Michigan which constituted the only considerable pine 
forest of southern Wisconsin. It began on the lake shore just 
south of the Sheboygan County line in Ozaukee County, ex- 
tended northwest to Lake Winnebago, thence northeast to 
Green Bay and throughout the Door Peninsula, covering Door 
County, Kewaunee County, Manitowoc County, with portions 
of Brown and Sheboygan. That forest, because of its con- 
venient location, constituted one of the earliest of the pine 
lumbering regions of eastern and southern Wisconsin. A 
second maple area lay north of the Wisconsin and occupied 
most of Kichland County, also the southern part of Sauk and 
the western third of Crawford. A third maple area lay in a 
straggling, blotchy manner over portions of Buffalo, Pepin, 
and Pierce counties, and a fourth covered parts of Polk and 
Burnett. 

Aside from the regions just described, all the rest of south- 
ern Wisconsin (and the limestone sections of western Wiscon- 
sin) was either oak forested, studded with oaks in the form 
of openings, or treeless, in which case it was called prairie 
when dry and swamp, swale, or marsh when wet. The oak 
forests, like the maple and pine forests already described, 
had various other kinds of trees mingled with them — maple, 
hickory, walnut, lynn (linden), aspen, etc. In the openings, 
however, which were extensive and numerous, fires seem to 
have destroyed all of the other growths, leaving only the 
oaks, which are more resistant. Undergrowth, too, was 
burned away, so that the oak trees, set at varying distances 
apart on grass covered slopes or plain-land, lent to the land- 
scape the appearance of a beautiful natural park within 
which, not infrequently, travelers saw herds of deer quietly 
feeding till startled by the human invaders of their paradise. 
The oak openings were easy to clear, they yielded some wood, 
and the soil was at first considered to be superior to that of 
the prairies. Therefore, the trend of early immigration set 
strongly toward the openings. 



18 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

The prairies of southern Wisconsin were grouped somewhat 
peculiarly within a broad belt along the southern and western 
portions of the great triangle formed by Lake Michigan, Illi- 
nois, and the Fox-Wisconsin line. If one were to draw a line 
from Fond du Lac at the south end of Lake Winnebago to 
Stoughton on Lake Kegonsa (First Lake), thence due east to 
Lake Michigan, practically all of the prairie lands would fall 
outside of that line. In the south, beginning at the lake, was 
an extensive prairie which occupied much of Kenosha and 
Racine counties; Walworth County had a number of small 
prairies, of which the most considerable was Elkhorn Prairie ; 
Rock Prairie in the county of Rock was one of the largest and 
most famous of the southern prairies, and there were three 
other prairies worthy of mention in that county; while the 
neighbor county of Green had a prairie covering a large tract 
in the southeast and east, also one occupying much of the 
south and southwest. Small prairie tracts — a section or two, 
sometimes three or four in a body — were distributed in an 
east-and-west line to the north of those already described. 
West of Green County the "big prairie" was the one which, 
beginning near the Mississippi, followed the Military Ridge 
with several short breaks to Madison, and from the central 
part sent out lobes south to Hazel Green in Grant County, to 
the Illinois line, and to Argyle in Lafayette. The prairie just 
described could be followed again northeastward by way of 
Waunakee, Sun Prairie, Lodi, Waupun, and Ripon to the 
vicinity of Lake Winnebago west of Fond du Lac. The breaks 
which appear on the map between the distinct prairie areas on 
that line were mostly occupied with oak openings. It was 
therefore a very simple matter to open a military road from 
Lake Winnebago via these prairies and the Military Ridge 
to the Mississippi. 

We have now accounted for most of the prairie districts of 
southern Wisconsin and, indeed, of the state. To the north 
of the Wisconsin, on the limestone foundation, there are but 
three areas requiring attention — the one in Crawford, Vernon, 



THE LAND 19 

and La Crosse, terminating in what was long known as Prairie 
la Crosse; the second along the Mississippi in Trempealeau 
County (this is principally on the upper Cambrian forma- 
tion) ; and the third in St. Croix County. The large prairie 
with small outlyers east of this in Dunn County, on the crys- 
talline formation, was also important as affecting the settle- 
ment of that region. 

It appears from a comparison of the forest map of the state 
with the geological map, that while the hardwoods were not 
confined to the limestone areas, yet, with inconsiderable ex- 
ceptions, the limestone areas were actually covered, when 
forested at all, with forests of hardwood. The main excep- 
tions were the Manitowoc region already described as pine 
bearing, and the limestone strip projecting south from the 
Michigan boundary to Fox River along the west coast of 
Green Bay, which was also a pine region. 

Allied to the prairies by reason of their freedom from the 
incumbrance of timber, so their surfaces could be mowed for 
hay as the prairies could be plowed without the previous labor 
of clearing, were the swamps or marshes. These sometimes 
supported groves of tamarack, cedar, or even pine, but were 
more commonly open land, heavily grassed, and when not too 
wet by nature or when partially drained, yielded an excellent 
quality of wild hay. The accompanying map (Fig. 7) shows 
the distribution of swamp land, and proves in a striking man- 
ner that both the Driftless Area and the region of older drift 
were free from swamps. They are found only in those sec- 
tions of the state which received the last drift, called the 
Wisconsin drift; in other words, it was the third and last 
visitation of the ice sheet which left the marshes and lakes in 
its train. From this it is easily seen that such features are 
but temporary at best. The processes of erosion and deposi- 
tion are tirelessly at work cutting down the stream levels here, 
filling in depressions there, so that area after area is being 
rescued from its swampy character and made into cultivable 
land. In due time, even without the powerful aid of man 



20 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 




FIG. 7. THE SWAMPS OF WISCONSIN DOTTED AEEAS 

Courtesy of Wisconsin Geological Survey 



THE LAND 21 

acting individually and cooperatively, the swamps and lakes 
of Wisconsin will as certainly disappear as does the win- 
ter's snow before the ardent rays of an April sun. 

Summarizing the agricultural possibilities of the land in 
Wisconsin when settlement began, we may say: First, the 
region of the hardwoods and the prairies which, as has been 
shown, corresponded closely to the area underlain by lime- 
stone was decidedly the most available for immediate use. 
That was true for several reasons. For one thing, the surface, 
while diversified and in part hilly, was predominantly of a 
character to make it fit for farming purposes. The soil was 
generally fertile and under proper tillage capable of growing 
successfully all crops adapted to the climate. The swamp 
meadows of the glaciated portion, and the unforested hills of 
the driftless, supplied, the one an abundance of hay and pas- 
ture, the other ample out-range for cattle, thus offering en- 
couragement for a livestock industry, which was further fa- 
vored by the wide and general distribution of a natural water 
supply in springs, creeks, and larger streams. These streams 
also furnished the necessary water power for sawmills and 
gristmills, upon which new communities are so largely de- 
pendent, and some of them gave promise of a future great 
manufacturing development. This possibility, and especially 
the exceptionally favorable opportunities for transportation 
by inland rivers, by the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, cap- 
tivated the imaginations of home seeking Americans and later 
helped to draw to this region many thousands of thrifty, inteL 
ligent farmers of foreign birth. The limestone region, except 
in the northeastern lobe, which was a pinery, was all fully 
populated by the year 1870. The rest of the state had then 
only scattering settlements. Here is sufficient proof of the 
preference shown by early settlers for the hardwood and 
prairie limestone lands. Second, the number and extent of 
the oak openings and of small prairies sheltered by forests 
made opportunities for opening farms with both ease and 
safety, plowland cleared or almost cleared being intermingled 



11 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

with woodland, whicli at first all American settlers deemed to 
be indispensable. Third, where the forest covering was heavy, 
as in most of the maple areas, clearing after all was not an 
impracticable task, although it involved hard and persistent 
labor, because, the trees once cut off or girdled, the stumps 
quickly rotted away. Besides, the heavy forest lay near the 
lake coast, where growing cities were sure to call for fuel 
wood, charcoal, pot and pearl ashes, and railroad ties, all of 
which gave the settlers some small compensation for the labor 
of clearing. 

The farming resources of northern Wisconsin, which now 
are so large and varied, will be discussed in a later chapter. 
It is only necessary to point out here that it was not exclu- 
sively the conditions of soil and surface which deterred set- 
tlers from taking the pine lands of the limestone area as 
readily as the hardwood lands. There was a widespread be- 
lief that hardwood trees were a guaranty of fertile soil, and 
it was also well known that pine stumps would remain in the 
ground indefinitely to hamper cultivation after the trees were 
slashed or girdled, while stumps of the hardwoods quickly 
rotted away, leaving the fields fully cleared and subject to the 
plow. 

SOURCES 

In preparing this chapter the most helpful single source was Law- 
rence Martin, The Physical Geography of Wisconsin. Other numbers 
in the publications of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History 
Survey which afforded much aid were Ray Hughes Whitbeck, The 
Geography and Industries of Wisconsin (1913), The Geography of 
Southeastern Wisconsin (1921), and The Geography of the Fox- 
Winnehago Valley (1915) ; also, Leonard S. Smith, The Water Powers 
of Wisconsin (1908). Some use was made of the several Soil Surveys, 
and much of Hotchkiss and Thwaites, Model of the map of Wisconsin. 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY SETTLEMENTS 

The lands of any country are important for the human op- 
portunity they represent. The use which is made of them 
depends upon the people who come into their possession. For 
long ages the lands of Wisconsin made their mute and in- 
effectual appeal to the natives. Then came a few French who 
were intent mainly upon trade such as the wild life of forest, 
stream, and swamp would yield when exploited by native 
huntsmen and trappers. Small, haphazard settlements 
grouped about the trading posts, especially those at Green 
Bay and Prairie du Chien, were all the French contributed 
toward the actual taming of the wilderness, their numbers be- 
ing too restricted to build a New France between the Great 
Lakes and the Father of Waters.^ 

The British occupation of the territory, after the treaty of 
Paris, 1763, was practically an extension of the fur trading 
era and need not, any more than the French, concern this story 
of the agricultural development of Wisconsin. Both French 
and English transmitted important benefits to the later sover- 
eigns of the soil, though not in the way of its cultivation. 
Their most valuable contributions lay in the exploration of 
the country, the mapping and testing of its communication 
lines, and the partial description of its resources. Even the 
precarious settlements they maintained were indirectly useful 
to American pioneer farmers for their service of supply; and 
their influence, with some exceptions, tended to make the 

* The early, romantic period of Wisconsin is well treated, in brief form, in 
Eeuben G. Thwaites, Wisconsin (Boston, 1908), and more fully in Louise Phelps 
Kellogg, Early Wisconsin (in preparation). Dr. Kelloars: has ju^ilished a shorter 
study of Wisconsin, 1634-1848, in the Wiscorisin Magazine of History, volumes ii 
and iii. , 



24 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Indians a support rather than a hindrance to agricultural 
settlers.2 

When American settlement began, it was not at first agri- 
cultural. Instead of the attractions of prairie and opening, it 
was the subtler lure of underground mineral wealth which at- 
tracted the first few thousand. They came with the eager im- 
petuosity which always characterizes the ''rush" to new min- 
ing districts. The lead region occupied that portion of the 
Driftless Area (see Fig. 8) which is underlain by the Galena- 
Blackriver formation. This includes the counties of Grant, 
Lafayette, Iowa, and a portion of Green in Wisconsin, also 
Jo Daviess in Illinois and Dubuque in Iowa. 

The lead, zinc sulphate, and zinc carbonate, familiarly 
called by miners ''mineral," "blackjack," and "drybone," 
occur mainly in rock crevices or pockets which exist in the 
Galena phase of the Galena-Blackriver limestone. Sometimes 
deposits are found in the Blackriver also and, very rarely, in 
others above and below.^ By locating the eastern boundary of 
the Driftless Area, and noting the northward and westward 
projection of the Galena-Blackriver formation, the area of the 
lead deposits can be readily determined. 

The lead deposits were known by the French as early at 
least as 1687 ; mines near the present Galena were shown on 
French maps from the first years of the eighteenth century, 
and the mines of that district were actually worked, though by 
crude methods, during that period. From that time until 
about 1819 the story of lead mining is a chequered one — 
French, Indians, Spanish, and a few English and Americans 
participating in it. Julien Dubuque, from his "Spanish 
Mines" across the river, had exploited the Galena district 
with the aid of Indians for many years prior to his death in 
1810. But when the United States took control under an 

■ This is particularly true of the French influence. On account of the War of 
1812, the later British influence was directly unfavorable though the trade of both 
French and English tended naturally toward the pacification of the Indians. 

* See Ulysses S. Grant, Beport on the Lead and Zinc Deposits, Wisconsin Geo- 
logical and Natural History Survey Bulletin No. 14, Madison, 1906. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 



25 




26 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

agreement with the Indian claimants of the land in 1819, when 
Jesse W. Shull, James Johnston of Kentucky, and others 
began mining systematically, a new era opened for the lead 
mines. In a few years the richness of the deposits came to be 
widely known, especially among the people of southern Illi- 
nois, Missouri, and Kentucky, and the mining community was 
augmented by every steamboat ascending the Mississippi to 
Fever River (Galena). In 1826 and 1827 several hundred 
came. They spread up through the Wisconsin district, reach- 
ing the northern limits of the lead region before 1829. A map 
published at Galena in 1829 shows how the main ''diggings" 
were distributed.* It shows also beginnings of towns in names 
like New Diggings, Shullsburg, Cassville, Platteville, Dodge- 
ville, and especially Mineral Point, the acknowledged center 
of the Wisconsin lead district. It shows trails into the lead 
region from southern Illinois and from Chicago, and trails out 
to Green Bay, Fort Winnebago, and Fort Crawford, to Arena 
and English Prairie (Muscoda) on the Wisconsin, and to 
Cassville on the Mississippi. Galena was still the main local 
trade center for the entire northern lead region, while St. 
Louis was its commercial metropolis. 

A serious interruption of the prosperity of the miners was 
caused by the Black Hawk War of 1832, in which numbers of 
them volunteered for military duty. But its result was the 
extinction of the Indian title to practically all of the lands 
comprising southern Wisconsin as defined by the Illinois boun- 
dary, Lake Michigan, and the line of Green Bay, Fox River, 
and Wisconsin River to the Mississippi, thence that river to 
the Illinois line.^ 

The mining community, being already well established, re- 
sumed its activity after the war and continued to develop in a 
notable manner for several years prior to the settlement of 
other sections of Wisconsin. A census in 1836 assigns to the 

* See Eeuben G. Thwaites, * ' Notes on Early Lead Mining, ' ' in Wisconsin His- 
torical Collections, xiii, 271-292 ; also map of lead region in ibid., xi, 400. 

" Tor an account of the war and the treaties, see Eeuben G. Thwaites, Wiscon- 
sin, chap. ix. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 27 

territory 11,683 persons. Of these the county of Iowa, which 
at that time included also the later Lafayette and Grant coun- 
ties — essentially the lead region — had 5234. Brown County, 
comprising the entire Green Bay region, the Fox River valley, 
and Lake Winnebago, had 2706. Crawford County, which was 
settled only in the neighborhood of Prairie du Chien, had 850. 
These three constituted the established settlements, and it 
will be seen that the lead region was more populous by 1678 
persons than the other two counties combined. The other area 
showing settlements, all practically new, was Milwaukee Coun- 
ty, which embraced the entire southeastern portion of Wiscon- 
sin (see Fig. 9). These scattering communities, hardly a year 
old, numbered 2893 persons. To this new region we must now 
direct attention. 

As soon as the Indian cessions were made, in 1832-33, gov- 
ernment surveyors entered Wisconsin. Beginning at the 
Illinois boundary as a base line, they ran the Fourth Principal 
Meridian due north through the heart of the lead region to 
Wisconsin River.^ Then they laid off ranges of to\vnships on 
both sides of the line, always terminating, for the time, at the 
Wisconsin-Fox River boundary. By the end of the year 1835 
the map of that part of the state, the older Wisconsin, was 
chequered with the surveyors' townships except in the south- 
eastern part, which was surveyed in 1836 (see Fig. 10). 

But the work of the government surveyors meant much 
more to settlers than the mere locating of township lines and 
section lines. The surveyors made the first detailed examina- 
tion of the land, recording their estimates of its quality — 
whether first class, second class, or third class — described the 
surface as level, rolling, rough and broken, or swampy, and 
indicated the kinds and the comparative density of the timber 
along the lines surveyed. They located the oak openings, the 
prairies, high rolling prairies, low ivet prairies, level dry 

' That meridian was afterwards made the boundary between Grant County and 
Iowa and Lafayette counties. Ranges of townships in Wisconsin are numbered 
west and east of that meridian. 



28 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 




FIG. 9. MAP OF COUNTIES IN 1836 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 



29 




30 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

prairies, etc' In a word, they noted the points about the lands 
surveyed which settlers were most keen to know, and this in- 
formation could be procured by land seekers, at slight expense 
for copying, from the government land office.^ Armed with 
copies of the surveyors' plats and transcripts of his notes, 
the land seeker was equipped for the arduous task of selecting 
favorable locations for the opening of new farms, while the 
speculator was enabled by their means to choose likely town 
sites, mill sites, or lands that might soon be wanted for agri- 
cultural purposes. Some of the surveyors themselves were 
tempted to speculate in the lands they knew so well, and no 
doubt their special knowledge was often placed at the service 
of friends. 

Accordingly, when in 1834 the government established two 
land offices for western Michigan Territory — one at Green 
Bay and one at Mineral Point — a ' ' land office business ' ' in the 
sale of lands to speculators began at once. They bought up 
river frontage where steamer landings prophesied the estab- 
lishment of river towns; they secured for town sites valley 
lands at junctions of streams; water powers were eagerly 
sought out and the lands about them entered; while timbered 
strips along the rivers, in the prairie regions, or other fine 
groves, which would be needed by later farmers, were bought 
up in the confident expectation of their prompt and advan- 
tageous sale to settlers.^ 

' See survey notes in margins of plats in Atlas, Wisconsin Domesday Boole, 
Town Studies, I (in press). 

* The surveyors were usually men of fairly good scientific training and were 
keen observers. Some of them, like Lucius Lyon, afterwards United States 
senator from Michigan, attained distinction in political life. A surveying party 
usually consisted of the surveyor, an ax-man, and two chainmen. The State Land 
Office at Madison has a complete collection of the notebooks of Wisconsin land 
surveyors, also all original survey plats. The romance of the land surveying 
period has almost wholly escaped the American novelist. 

" The land office tract books contain the records of sales. When these are 
compared with the surveyors ' plats and notes, the story of speculation is revealed, 
and one sees usually just what advantage the speculator sought to secure when 
he located his land. Names of many distinguished Americans appear on the plats 
of Wisconsin lands. We note among them Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Caleb 
Gushing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Timbered lands in western New York, in 
1830, were considered quite as valuable as the best farming lands. So there was 
seen to be good business sense in buying timbered lands. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 31 

However, the speculative furore, which temporarily col- 
lapsed with the panic of 1837, expended itself mainly in the 
western ranges of townships surveyed early, and thus the 
splendid farming territory now embraced in Rock, Walworth, 
Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Jefferson coun- 
ties remained almost wholly open to the selections of pros- 
pective settlers. 

Settlement in the southeastern counties of Wisconsin forms 
an excellent commentary on the process of settling the wild 
lands of the country as a whole. Theoretically, it might seem 
as if the lands would have been taken first directly along the 
lake front wherever ports were within reach,. and thereafter 
the belt of settlement would gradually widen away into the 
interior, the means of communication being created as fast as 
the increments of new settlement required. In fact, no such 
regularity in settling a new country has ever been observed. 
The geographic and social facts which imparted their impulses 
to the agricultural occupation of southeastern Wisconsin were 
mainlj^ three : first, the existence of the lead mining region of 
northwestern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin, whose in- 
terests tended to converge upon the Mississippi and Rock riv- 
ers ; second, Chicago, city of destiny, building up near the foot 
of Lake Michigan and eagerly seeking ways of concentrating 
lake trade at that port ; third, the foresight shown by the build- 
ers of Milwaukee, that for successful rivalry with Chicago 
their port must establish roads, canals, or other means of 
drawing commerce from the interior. 

The lead mines themselves constituted at first no inconsid- 
erable market for agricultural produce,^** and it is not surpris- 
ing that farmers should have desired the fine prairie lands in 
the vicinity of Rock River, particularly in the days when the 
navigability of that stream for steamboats was almost an 
article of religious faith. Rock River was a tributary of the 
Mississippi, and the entire lead region continued for a number 

" In 1843, by the act of August 3, the lead miners were permitted to purchase 
their claims. Thereafter farming became a more important feature of life in the 
lead region. 



32 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

of years to look to St, Louis as their metropolis. But Mil- 
waukee's builders saw the significance of the Eock River val- 
ley, as well as the mines, and promptly projected their Mil- 
waukee and Eock Eiver Canal, which, although it ultimately 
failed, had a powerful effect in directing settlement along des- 
ignated lines, promoting road building, and binding the inter- 
ests of large areas occupied by new communities to the lake 
port at Milwaukee. 

Fox Eiver (or the Pishtaka) is a branch of the Illinois. The 
lower portions of its valley, within the state of Illinois, began 
to be settled almost as soon as the discussions in the Illinois 
legislature advertised the prospect of a canal connecting the 
lake at Chicago with Illinois Eiver. Such a canal would 
open out a market by the lakes, while Illinois Eiver, like 
the Eock, connected with the Mississippi. Fox Eiver itself 
was supposed to be navigable for flat-bottomed boats as far as 
Eochester in Eacine County, fifty-four miles by a direct course 
from the Illinois line. To a generation which still relied on 
the flatboat as a means of marketing its surplus products, 
farming in the vicinity of such a stream, even without a canal, 
seemed a reasonably safe, normal manner of life. 

So it was that pioneers ascended Fox Eiver, marking out 
claims at attractive points; others ascended Eock Eiver or 
reached it overland from Chicago by the prairie trails almost 
as early as the founders of Eacine and Kenosha took cog- 
nizance of the promising lake ports south of Milwaukee. And 
once a lodgment was effected in the river valleys themselves, 
the intervening prairies and openings were scoured for mill 
sites, town sites, and the choicest farming situations,^^ all in 
advance of the construction of roads or the canals which pro- 
moters were promising. But the land ofiice records show that, 
in general, the farm locations fixed upon had a very definite 
relation to prospective improvements like canals, roads, and 

"See Vanderpoel's letter in Eacine Argus, June 2, 1838. Fine description of 
two beautiful farm sites already occupied in 1837 in the district between Fox and 
Bock rivers. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 33 

later, railroads, or to existing facilities for marketing prod- 
ucts, especially by the rivers. 

The movement which resulted in the first occupation of the 
southeastern counties began in 1835. It attained consider- 
able vigor in 1836 and 1837, and by the end of the year 1839 
the region may be considered settled, though much good land 
was to be had for some time thereafter. It was a movement in 
which hundreds were engaged at the same time, and while 
some localities were occupied a little earlier and some a little 
later, as the local histories show, for the purposes of this 
general statement it is sufficient to regard the principal set- 
tlements as having taken place about the same time. These 
principal settlements were near the lake shore, from the south- 
east corner of Kenosha County north almost continuously to 
the Milwaukee County line ; along Fox River in both Kenosha 
and Racine counties ;^^ along Rock River, near Beloit, Janes- 
ville, and farther north, also west of the river, on the prairie ; 
at Lake Geneva, Troy Lake, Whitewater, Delavan, Spring 
Prairie, Elkhorn Prairie, etc. in Walworth County. The Fox 
River line was followed northward into Waukesha County, 
as was the line of Rock River and its tributaries, and the pro- 
posed canal, into both Waukesha and Jefferson counties, set- 
tlers always being guided by the opportunity of securing ideal 
locations near the natural or artificial lines of communication 
and transportation. 

It is possible with the aid of the records of entries and pur- 
chases, with the surveyors' description of the land, the topo- 
graphical charts prepared for some areas by the United States 
Greological Survey, and the soil surveys (available in a few 
cases) to exhibit minutely the settlers' choices among kinds of 
land. A good illustration is township 3, range 22 east, which 
is a part of the town of Mount Pleasant, in Racine County, 
whose eastern iDoundary is Lake Michigan and which contains 
the port of Racine. The chart (Fig. 11) shows that the eastern 
ranges of sections were taken up at the earliest possible time, 

" Kenosha County was set off from Eacine County in 1850. 



34 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



LAND £/vr/?/£J ^ m~ PLEASANT 




Prepare cl for Ihe WisconSLn Domesday Booh 

FIG. 11. LAND ENTRIES, EACINE COUNTY 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 35 

in 1838-39, the first land sale at the Milwaukee land office. 
Some of the southern sections and some of the northern sec- 
tions were taken at the same time, together with small de- 
tached areas elsewhere; but the great body of land in the 
western and central portions of the township was left for 
later purchase, some of it going as late as 1846. According 
to the surveyor, the land which was shunned by the earliest 
comers was quite as good, on the whole, as that which was 
taken first. Why was it left? 

The township in question is a prairie township. Most of 
the land is described by the surveyor as high prairie and 
the contour lines on the topographic chart show lowlands in 
only two principal areas, both of them narrow and inconsid- 
erable as compared with the broad ridges. A few small de- 
pressions occur in the prairies themselves. Within the east- 
ernmost of the long low strips — the one along the course of 
Pike River and above its head — are the only extensive 
marshes in the township, though a smaller marsh occupies the 
second trench, in sections 8, 9, and 17. There are practically 
no openings, though patches of forest relieve the otherwise 
undiversified prairie character of the land. The chart indi- 
cates, generally, the distribution of forest, high prairie, low 
prairie or meadow, and marsh land. All of the sections in the 
easternmost range had some timber on them except 12, and a 
body of timber lay just east of that section. There was also 
timber in 35, 31, a little in 30, a considerable body in 3 and 4, 
9 and 10. Sections 6 and 7 abutted on a "grove" in township 
3, range 21 east. A road, hardly better than a trail at the out- 
set, crossed diagonally from section 35 to section 1 — the so- 
called Chicago-Green Bay road. At an early date also an- 
other territorial road was opened through the northern part 
of the town from east to west. The marshes along Pike 
River may be considered an obstacle to easy road making from 
the main road into the central portion of the township, but this 
obstacle disappears at the south as well as at the north. 



36 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Our land-entries cards show that the easternmost range of 
sections and the easternmost half of the next range were en- 
tered at once on the opening of these lands to sale.^^ Beyond 
that, the purchases were sporadic. They included low ground, 
but not the lowest, along Pike River — lands which adjoined 
the preferred sections — also some other low land in the south, 
the timbered tract in section 31, three tracts toward the north- 
west which had timber at their western margin, and all of the 
big grove in the north, with some tracts of adjacent prairie. 
But the big, open, unsheltered prairie occupying the middle 
and western portions of the township was left for several 
years as "cow commons" for the farms ranged around it. 

The facts brought out in this study are reinforced by those 
which emerge in the study of other towns. They show that 
the early pioneers appreciated timber when found, in sparse 
measure, in a prairie region. They loved to build their homes 
in the shelter of woods. They preferred a tract of woodland 
as a portion of their holdings, but at any rate they wanted 
wood within easy reach. For plow land they chose the high 
prairie because it was well drained, or land of the same char- 
acter in the openings. If they could have this as the main 
portion of their farms, with forty or eighty acres of timber 
and an equal quantity of low prairie or meadow, they were 
content. Those who entered a new region early enough to 
pick and choose, invariably selected lands which gave them 
these three elements of fundamental utility. The first claim 
takers in Mount Pleasant obtained them approximately. Later 
comers, observing that the vacant lands were too exclusively 
prairie, swerved off toward Fox River, or took the prairie 
trails to Rock River, or went up into Jefferson, Waukesha, or 
Dane County in order to lay the foundations of their farms 
in the right kinds of land properly distributed. It was only 
when they began to realize the counter disadvantage involved 
in hauling their surplus wheat twenty, thirty, fifty, or one 
hundred miles over heavy roads to the lake ports (which they 

" Most of those lands, to be sure, had been * ' claimed ' ' and settled upon earlier, 
some as early as 1835, the bulk of them in '36, '37, and '38. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 37 

in the beginning hoped to avoid by shipping on rivers and 
canals), that they saw the possibilities in the left-over lands 
lying within eight or ten miles of such ports.^^ Then the big 
prairie in Mount Pleasant was promptly taken up, and by the 
end of 1846 there was nothing left except the school section 
and a few small pieces of swale land. 

It is noteworthy that nearly all those who entered govern- 
ment lands thus early, in Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, and 
Rock counties, bore names which show their possessors to 
have been Americans, or at least English speaking persons. 
And the testimony of those who describe the early settlements 
is that the people were mostly from New York and New Eng- 
land. The testimony of the census is to the same effect. For 
example, in 1850 Mount Pleasant in Racine County had a 
population of 1101 ; of that number, 842 were native born, 259 
foreign. There were 144 American families and only 48 for- 
eign families. Similar statistics are obtained for "Whitewater 
in Walworth County, which had 992 American and 234 for- 
eign born. In Plymouth, Rock County, were 377 American 
born persons, and 194 foreign born. The county of Racine in 
1850 had a total population of 15,004, with 8867 natives and 
6083 foreign born. Kenosha County's figures were 10,735 
native and 3383 foreign born, while Walworth had 14,865 to 
2787 and Rock 16,435 to 4201. These statistics show a great 
preponderance of native born in those counties taken as a 
whole.^^ 

Going north to Milwaukee County and to Washington 
County the case is different. In 1850 Milwaukee County had 
18,229 foreign born as against 12,685 native, while Washing- 
ton County had 12,100 foreign and 7252 native. 

Thus it appears that some condition, which in Washington 
County at least could not have been the presence of an impor- 

** Many of the early settlers left New York and Vermont at a time when new 
canal projects were being prosecuted to completion almost yearly. It is little 
wonder they should have faith in a project as seemingly feasible as the Milwaukee 
and Rock River Canal. 

" I am using, in the county statistics, the results of a hand count made for 
the Society by Dr. M. M. Quaife, with an assistant. 



38 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

tant town, was causing the northern counties to be settled 
largely by people of foreign birth. A study of the land entries 
for the town of Franklin, Milwaukee County, shows that the 
earliest entries were made mainly by English speaking per- 
sons who, in rather numerous cases, were Irish or of Irish 
descent. But many of the American entrymen appear to 
have bought for speculative purposes, or at least decided in a 
few years to sell their lands, for the transfers became numer- 
ous in the forties, and by 1850 there were only 15 American 
families to 285 foreign.^*^ The foreigners included 282 per- 
sons born in Germany, 292 born in Ireland, and 39 in Holland. 
All other countries furnished 58. 

The one significant contrast between the lands of Racine 
County and those of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, and Washington 
counties is that the former are prairies and openings, with 
some dense groves; the latter are heavily forested for the 
most part. It might seem from this that American settlers 
preferred the more open lands, while immigrants from for- 
eign lands preferred to begin in the woods. The case, how- 
ever, is not so simple. We have already seen that the ideal 
farm, to the American settler, was a combination of timber, 
prairie or opening, and marsh — for fuel and shelter, cultiva- 
tion, and hay or pasture. Now, the above is precisely the 
*' ideal farm" for the ambitious immigrant as well as for the 
native. William Dames, an intelligent German immigrant of 
1848, after much search found such an ideal tract. It had, 
he says, *'160 acres in prairie, 320 acres openings and 160 
acres meadow together with some marsh along the shores of 
Rush Lake."^'^ The same writer speaks of the '^ murderous 
toil" of clearing a farm in the heavy timber, which he regards 
as a life job for the unfortunate settler. Why, then, did so 
many German immigrants elect to spend their lives in making 
farms under those conditions'? 

'"In this count the family is classified by the birthplace of its head. Fre- 
quently the children of foreign parents were natives. 

"William Dames, Wie Sieht es in Wisconsin Aus (1848). 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 39 

The answer is found, by analogy, in this other question : 
Why do the poorer people, m every crowded city, live on the 
low grounds, while the well-to-do occupy the high, command- 
ing, and sightly knolls ? It is at bottom a question of economic 
ability, not of personal or racial tastes. The poorer immi- 
grants and the poorer natives also, with of course many ex- 
ceptions, settled in the woods because they could not afford 
to encounter the risk of taking an ideal farm in the "Congress 
land" districts, nor could they afford to buy such land from 
speculators or from farmers. They took what was at hand, 
the heavily wooded lands avoided by persons who were in 
position to pick and choose. In many cases they might have 
found lands on the open prairies, which, as we saw, were 
taken later than the other lands even by Americans who had 
some means. But the person without means would have been 
helpless in such a situation. He would need money to buy 
lumber both for building and for fencing, while in the timber 
his personal labor supplied these essentials, without cost, in 
the process which at the same time cleared his land. Besides, 
the timbered areas near Milwaukee had the advantage of a 
good market not only for the agricultural products to be 
raised after the work of clearing was done, but even for some 
of the incidental products of clearing, like cord-wood, pot and 
pearl ashes, charcoal, and later, railway ties. Where the 
timber was largely or partly merchantable pine or cedar, as 
in the counties north of Milwaukee along the lake, the saw- 
mills and shingle mills furnished a market. Thus the settler 
on a woods claim, if physically equal to the labor involved, 
might hope to supply his family with necessities at least from 
the forest products of his farm, while extending, year by year, 
his cultivated area. In the end his farm might even be a better 
one than if it had been on the prairie, for a portion of it was 
always fresh land, and there is some reason to believe that 
farms rescued from the forest by dint of the indomitable labor 
of the pioneers are genf^rally more highly appreciated by the 



40 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

second and third generations than are the prairie farms.^^ 
But the creation of such farms was an heroic process, entail- 
ing real hardships, unremitting toil, and privations for many 
years. 

The forested area in the eastern portion of Wisconsin in- 
cluded the counties of Milwaukee, Washington, Ozaukee, She- 
boygan, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, Door, Brown, Calumet, with 
parts of Fond du Lac, Dodge, Jefferson, and Waukesha. Of 
these, several, including Door and Kewaunee, were still un- 
organized in 1850, and there was but a small population in 
Brown, Manitowoc, and Calumet. The census count, however, 
assigns a large majority of foreign born not only to Milwau- 
kee County, where the city had early attracted considerable 
numbers of Germans, but to Washington and Manitowoc also. 
The other counties of the group show native born majorities, 
though in Sheboygan, Brown, Fond du Lac, and Waukesha 
the foreign born number more than one-third of the total. On 
the other hand, the northern portion of the heavily forested 
area was a decade or more behind southeastern Wisconsin 
in its development. Manitowoc County, for example, where 
lumbering began very early, waited for the settlement of its 
farm lands on the heavy influx of Germans who arrived be- 
tween 1848 and 1854, and the same population element pressed 
into parts of Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, Brown, and other 
northern counties. 

A study of the early maps will show how definitely the loca- 
tions of agricultural settlements were determined by market- 
ing possibilities. Captain T. J. Cram's map, 1839, reveals 
clearly that, outside of the mining region, the farm settle- 
ments were east of a line that followed Eock River to Water- 
town and ran thence north to Fond du Lac. But, in fact, only 
the portion of that strip which lay south of a line drawn from 
Watertown due east to the lake was actually settled except at 
intervals along Lake Michigan, if we except the beginnings of 
Fond du Lac itself and Oshkosh, with a few paper towns on 

" Joseph Schaf er, ' ' The Town of Newton, Manitowoc County, ' ' in Wis. Mag. 
of Hist., V. 144-159. 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 41 

Lake Winnebago and, of course, Green Bay. To the west of 
our assumed line lay Madison, founded in 1837 as the capital 
of the Territory because its choice was the most satisfactory 
compromise between the lead mining region and the lake. 
There was not much farming done in that part of the Terri- 
tory for a number of years, nor in the prairies and openings 
northward from Madison to Fox River, nor in all of the coun- 
try north of the Military Road and west to the Mississippi. 
Such places as appear on the map along Wisconsin River — 
Prairie du Sac, Arena, Helena, "Muskoday" — have signifi- 
cance merely as trading points in relation to the lead mines, 
not in relation to an agricultural community.^^ It was early 
discovered that, while the Mississippi steamers were an inval- 
uable resource for bringing in necessaries, carrying away lead 
ore, etc., freight charges due to the difficulties of its navigation 
would prove prohibitive for shipping farm produce. Hence, 
only those living near enough to the lake ports to make pos- 
sible the delivery of wheat, by team over execrable roads, 
could really farm. Settlers in Rock River valley marketed 
their crops in that manner for more than a decade. Yet, 
even they complained that on account of the cost of trans- 
portation, the more they had to sell, the poorer they became ; 
while those living farther west had practically no outlet either 
south or east.^" 

It was the coming of the railways which changed these un- 
toward conditions and made farming a normal occupation be- 
yond the limits of wagon transportation for farm products, 
at the same time giving a tremendous impulse to wheat rais- 
ing in the southeastern counties by reducing the cost of mar- 
keting.2i The Milwaukee and Mississippi Railway, begun in 

" Helena was the place where Daniel Whitney 's shot tower was located. Lead 
brought there in wagons was cast and the shot carried away by steamer either via 
the Portage and Green Bay or via the Mississippi. Muscoda was the location of a 
smelter maintained at the river by William S. Hamilton. The lead was brought 
by a down-hill haul from the prairie to the south. 

" Balthaser H. Meyer, ' ' Railway Legislation, ' ' in Wis. Hist. Colls., xiv, 213. 

*^ See Josiah F. Willard, in Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 
1853, 116. 



42 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

1849, built gradually westward by short sections and sent its 
surveyors forward ahead of the construction parties. Our 
record of land entries shows that prospective settlers usually 
reached an area about to be tapped by the railway very soon 
after the surveyors had located the road. Many made pur- 
chases before the road was built, but not long before. Pioneer- 
ing, for its own sake or as an expression of ingrained habit, 
was rather uncommon among the Easterners as w^ell as among 
the foreigners who settled southern Wisconsin.-- All wanted 
land, however, and the railways into new regions multiplied 
opportunities to secure the kinds of land most desired. Hence 
the spaces noted as open in 1839 are no longer unoccupied on 
the map of 1853. Hence, also, some spaces north of the Wis- 
consin, in Crawford, Richland, and Sauk counties, are shown 
to be settled at the later date. 

Since statehood was achieved in the year 1848, it is interest- 
ing to determine approximately how the agricultural settle- 
ments were distributed at that time. The political symbol of 
the rural settlement is the organized town, which usually, 
after a district of country became fully settled, was a survey- 
or's township six miles square. These towns were organized 
in the various counties as they were needed to accommodate 
the people. Sometimes, in the beginning of settlement, a dis- 
trict embracing several townships, or even a whole county, 
was made a town for local government purposes, to be sub- 
divided as settlement thickened up. Hence, a map showing 
the organized towns with dates of their organization will 
describe the farming community of the state at the given date, 
and also show the progress of settlement. The accompanying 
map (Fig. 12) of southern Wisconsin shows (1) the surveyor's 
townships. (2) In heavily shaded figures, the organization of 
towns by the legislature to 1848. These early towns, as will 
be seen, generally embraced several townships, sometimes 

-- In this respect conditions in early Wisconsin contrasted sharply with those 
in the early stages of community building in some of the other states, like Ken- 
tucky, southern Illinois, and Missouri. However, is it not possible that in Ameri- 
can history we have generally overstressed the idea that men have chosen the life 
of backwoodsmen rather than accepted it as a matter of stern necessity? 







FIG. 12. ORGANIZED TOWNS, 1848 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS 43 

entire counties. (3) In lighter shaded figures, the dates of 
organization of towns within older and more spacious towns. 
(4) Those portions, within the lines of the map, which re- 
mained unorganized as late as 1848, the date of the latest 
session laws examined in this study. All portions of the state 
falling outside of the lines of the map were unorganized. For 
example, the lead region, though longer settled, was not at 
this time organized into towns. This is generally attrib- 
uted to the fact that the dominant element there was ac- 
customed to the county form of local government. The consti- 
tution, however, provided for the uniform adoption of the 
town system over all the state, and the southwestern counties 
were soon accordingly subdivided into towns. However, as 
previously pointed out, the lead region was not primarily an 
agricultural section. 

The figures, therefore, which are in all cases the last two 
digits of the number representing the year (as "38" for 
"1838"), constitute a fairly accurate picture of the manner in 
which settlement spread over the state and the rate at which 
it concentrated in given areas. The lines a-b and b-c enclose, 
with Lake Michigan and the Illinois boundary, the one great 
area which was sufficiently settled by 1838 to justify its sub- 
division into towns smaller than counties. That area em- 
braces the counties of Walworth, Racine, Kenosha, also Mil- 
waukee, Waukesha, and parts of Rock and Jefferson. Dane 
County, with Green and the northwestern part of Rock, re- 
mained undivided until 1846-47, portions of them longer. 
About Lake Winnebago were one town dating from 1840, two 
from 1842, and one from 1845. Aside from these, only two 
towns were organized prior to 1846 in the farming area north 
of the line a-b. Also, south of that line many of the separate 
erections came as late as 1845, 1846, and 1847 in the north- 
western part, while in the east, south, and southwest portions 
of the region they generally came earlier. The towns around 
Green Bay took care of the organization of the old French 
Canadian trading settlements. In none of the towns organ 



44 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

ized prior to 1846, save three or four in western Rock County, 
were tlie farmers living at a greater distance than sixty miles, 
in a direct line, from the lake. Those who were farming along 
or near the northern border of southern Wisconsin found a 
temporary market in the lumbering districts near at hand. 

The census map for 1850 reveals on the whole a similar 
result, but it does not discriminate between agricultural set- 
tlements and those incident to mining and lumbering. It 
shows an area along the lake coast, through Kenosha, Racine, 
and Milwaukee counties, which is peopled to the density of 
45-90 to the square mile. That is of course due in part to the 
lake towns. The balance of what the preceding map shows to 
have been the farming area distinctively has 18-45. Most of 
the lead region, with considerable territory adjacent to it in 
the north and east, also the Sheboygan County area, has but 
6-8. The rest, symbolizing merely pioneer beginnings north 
of the Wisconsin and near the river, the thinly populated old 
settlements about Green Bay, the several lumbering regions 
on the Wisconsin and the Chippewa, also on the Mississippi, 
and the Lake Superior colonies, has only 2-6 to the square 
mile. All of these areas except the lumbering tracts in the 
interior and those on the upper lake are located on the lime- 
stone formations. 



SOURCES 

In preparing this chapter I have used Ulysses S. Grant, Lead and 
Zinc Deposits (Madison, 1906) ; the Collections of the State Historical 
Society of Wisconsin ; various items and volumes ; and the Wisconsin 
Domesday Book plats and records, MS., some of which are in press and 
will be issued as Wisconsin Domesday Book, Town Studies, I. 



CHAPTER III 

PIONEER ORIGINS 

The grand inquest which the United States government 
conducts every tenth year under the name of the Census 
results in the assembling and recording of a vast store of facts 
about the people of every state, as well as about farming con- 
ditions, manufacturing, and general business. In taking the 
seventh census (1850)^ in Wisconsin there was usually an 
official enumerator for each organized town, while unorgan- 
ized territory was divided into districts, to each of which a 
census taker was assigned. These men traversed the country 
by the usual roads, visiting the roadside homes in regular 
order and making side trips to see those living off the roads. 
Sometimes they failed to find anyone who could give correct 
information at home; in such cases they filled in their blanks 
with the aid of the neighbors or left the families off the list 
entirely. They often set down incorrect statements about 
particular persons or families, either because their informa- 
tion was wrong or because they misunderstood it. The latter 
was especially apt to be true of foreign born families whose 
members could not speak English, whose names were strange, 
unpronounceable, and the spelling impossible to Americans. 
Occasionally they did not attempt to spell them but wrote 
down, instead of the name, the descriptive word ''Dutchman" 
or ''Norwegian," Quite naturally, less care was exercised in 
obtaining accurately the facts about foreign born persons and 
families than those about the Americans and the English 
speaking British, Scotch, Welsh, or Irish.- Still, the census 

» The first census was taken in 1790. Then followed (2) 1800, (3) 1810, (4) 
1820, (5) 1830, (6) 1840, (7) 1850. The census of 1920 is number 14. 

' But sometimes hundreds of names of Irish laborers were taken from the rolls 
of railway contractors for whom the men were working; in such cases ages, etc. 
were omitted. 



46 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

gives us the best record we have, and it is an important source 
for the study of the population of the state.^ 

Taking the grand total, as given by the census, of 305,391 
inhabitants of Wisconsin in 1850, we could reasonably classify 
them as (1) American born; (2) English speaking foreign 
born; (3) non-English speaking foreign born. In the first 
class we would have approximately 198,000; in the second, 
47,840 ; and in the third, 58,400. The last two numbers, added 
together, represent the aggregate of those born outside of 
the United States — 106,240, or more than one-third the total 
population of the state. 

The first class may again be subdivided according to the 
regions in which the American born population originated, 
into Eastern and Northeastern, Southern and Southwestern, 
Northwestern, and Wisconsin. Placing these elements in the 
order of numerical importance, we have:^ 

Eastern and Northeastern 103,371 

Wisconsin born 63,015 

Northwestern 21,367 

Southern and Southwestern 5,425 

Total 193,178 

The second class, English speaking foreigners, divides read- 
ily into four groups, as follows:^ 

Irish 21,043 

English 18,952 

Welsh 4,319 

Scotch 3,527 

Total 47,841 

' The State Historical Society has the MS. agricultural schedules of the United 
States Census for Wisconsin for the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth censuses, and 
the poj.idation schedules for the seventh, eighth, and ninth. These schedules con- 
stitute the basis of much of our work on the Wisconsin Domesday Book. 

* In this tabulation we have disregarded numbers which were small and of no 
special significance. The resulting total is consequently about 4000 below the 
census total of American born. 

^ The British-Americans, numbering 8277, were mainly French-Canadians and 
they are accordingly classed with the non-English speaking foreigners. 



PIONEER ORIGINS 47 

The third class is composed of five groups: 

Germans 38,054 

Scandinavians (all Norwegians except 146 Swedes 

and 88 Danes) 8,885 

Swiss 1,244 

Dutch (Hollanders) 1,157 

British- Americans (French-Canadians) 8,277 

Total 57,617 

A further analysis of the first group of class one, Americans 
born in the eastern and northeastern states, discloses the 
startling fact that 68,595 of the 103,370 came from New York. 
Vermont was second with 10,157, Pennsylvania third with 
9570. Appreciable numbers came from Massachusetts and 
Maine. Of the third group, 21,367, those born in the north- 
western states, Ohio furnished more than one-half, or 11,402. 
Illinois contributed 5292, Indiana 2773, Michigan 1900. The 
southern and southwestern group (group four) is made up 
of small numbers contributed by the several states more or 
less equally, Virginia and Kentucky leading, each with less 
than 2000. Since the first of the four native groups was so 
predominantly large and since the non-English speaking for- 
eigners were of recent arrival in Wisconsin, it follows that 
the majority of the "Wisconsin born, group two, must have 
been the children of the eastern and northeastern immigrants. 

The census, by counties, enables us to show with reasonable 
accuracy how these classes were distributed in 1850, and the 
map (Fig. 13) has been prepared for the purpose of revealing 
what elements predominated in each county. Of the 26 coun- 
ties for which figures were obtained, all but three — ^Manito- 
woc, Milwaukee, and Washington — have a majority of native 
born. And in 21 cases the two elements natives of New 
York and natives of Wisconsin combined make a majority of 
this native majority. The exceptions are the counties of 
Grant, Iowa, Lafayette, Green, and Richland. The last 
named has a very small number, and the case may as well 
be omitted as possessing no significance. In Green County 



48 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

it becomes necessary to combine the Ohio born with those 
from New York and Wisconsin to make a majority of the 
native element, though the largest numbers came from 
New York and Wisconsin. Only the three lead region 
counties are peculiar. In Grant, the largest numbers were 
from Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio, these three aggre- 
gating more than one-half the total native population. In 
Iowa County the order is Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York ; 
and in Lafayette, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Thus 
natives of Illinois in each of the three lead counties were nu- 
merically in the lead, and they were not first in number else- 
where. Moreover, the total number of persons born in Illinois 
who were residents of Wisconsin in 1850 was but 5292, and 
these three counties contained 2353 of these, or not many less 
than one-half. The lead region, therefore, was where the 
' * Suckers ' ' went. 

These Illinois natives were prevailingly from the southern 
half of that state, which had been settled from the Southwest 
and the South. They accordingly may be said to reinforce 
that element which found the lead region especially congenial, 
as the census shows. For example, there were only 1012 
Missourians in Wisconsin in 1850. But the lead counties had 
840 of them ! The state harbored 1429 natives of Kentucky. 
The lead region furnished homes to 993 of them. Of Ten- 
nesseans Wisconsin had only 449. The lead region had ab- 
sorbed 317 of these. There were 322 North Carolinians in the 
state; in the lead region were 127. Virginia contributed to 
the state 1611, to the lead region 778. The other counties bor- 
dering on Illinois were fairly uniform in their American ele- 
ment, though Green County, the western portion of which was 
also in the^lead district, had not enough New Yorkers to make 
up, with those born in Wisconsin, one-half of that element.^ 
In Rock, Walworth, Kenosha, and Racine the New Yorkers 
were very numerous. In Walworth they constituted more 
than one-half of the American born, in each of the other three 

' The western half of Green County was in the lead mining region and had some 
Cornish miners as well as many Illinois people. 



PIONEER ORIGINS 49 

counties nearly one-half. New Englanders, too, were rela- 
tively prominent. Eock County had nearly 1200 Vermonters 
and 1700 from the other five northeastern states. Walworth 
had 2250 from New England, Kenosha 1300, and Racine 1650. 
In all those counties the southern and southwestern element 
was negligible, and the northwestern element, aside from 
those born in Ohio, nearly so. 

Not only was the lead region peculiar in the selection of its 
large majority of American settlers, but it was equally pecu- 
liar in the selection of foreign settlers. In all three of those 
counties natives of England were the dominant foreign ele- 
ment in their population complex, and each had a different 
second largest foreign element — Lafayette, Irish; Iowa, 
Welsh; and Grant, German. Now the English, while making 
the second largest number in the foreign element of five or six 
of the other counties, stood first in only one of them.^ The 
reason for the presence of 6670 Englishmen in these three 
counties was precisely that they contained the lead mines. 
These English were in part smelters and mine bosses who 
came from Yorkshire, but chiefly miners from the tin mining 
district of Cornwall.* Thus it is seen that in this interesting 
section of the state, where the rock strata were warped, 
cracked, and creviced by geologic forces in the primordial 
ages of the earth, and these apertures filled with ore, which 
men learned to extract, there was developed,- on the basis of a 
peculiar industry, a society which differed widely in its compo- 
sition from that of the strictly farming districts. When at a 
later time the farming interest in the lead bearing area became 
dominant, this social condition, as we shall see, was destined 
to change. Many new people came in, but large numbers of 
the one-time miners settled down to the less venturous and 
exciting occupation of agriculturists. 

In its foreign element Green County had 364 Swiss. These 
were the nucleus of the noted New Glarus colony, begun in 

' Walworth, aside from two cases of counties having insignificant populations 
in 1850 — Richland and Adams. 

* Louis A. Copeland, ' ' The Cornish Element in Southwestern Wisconsin, ' ' in 
Wis. Hist. Colls., xiv, 301-334. 



50 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

1845 by emigrants from the canton of Glarus, Switzerland.^ 
In 1850 their number amounted to one-twentieth of the total 
population of the county, and in 1890 it was about one-third.^*' 
Here is a striking instance of the survival of a foreign element 
under conditions such as existed in early Wisconsin. This 
change illustrates also the trend in Wisconsin away from the 
social dominance of the eastern Americans to that of the de- 
scendants of foreign immigrants. However, the process was 
one extending over many years, and the influence of the East- 
erners was in many respects rendered permanent through 
educational, religious, and social institutions which they in- 
troduced. 

In Rock County's foreign element the lead was already 
taken by the Norwegians, who numbered 1241. The nearest 
second was the Irish, with 915. Following them, in regular 
order, came English, Canadians, Scotch, Germans, and Welsh. 
The Norwegian emigration to America is said to date from 
the coming of the ''sloop folk" from Stavangar in 1825, and 
the forming of a settlement near Rochester, New York. In 
1834 several families removed to Ottawa in the Fox River 
valley of Illinois, and thither came many emigrants from the 
old world in 1836 and 1837. The Ottawa colony was the west- 
ern hive from which the Norwegians swarmed, mainly west 
and south, during the early forties. Others, coming to Mil- 
waukee in 1839, formed colonies in Waukesha and Rock coun- 
ties. Racine County also received a goodly number and soon 
became a mecca for Norwegians.^ ^ The census of 1850 shows 
the three counties of Dane, Rock, and Racine to have had the 
largest numbers, in that order — Dane, 2779 ; Rock, 1241 ; and 
Racine, 678. The town of Norway in Racine County was set- 

• See the admirable history of the founding of the New Glarus colony, by John 
Luchsinger, in Wis. Hist. Colls., viii, 411-445; also, the same author's "Planting 
of the Swiss Colony at New Glarus," in ibid., xii, 335-382. 

" Another Swiss colony dwelt, in 1850, in the southeastern part of Sauk County. 
The census assigns 331 persons of Swiss birth to that county. The Sauk County 
Swiss colony was the birthplace of ex-Governor Emanuel Philipp, whose parents 
were of that immigration. 

" George T. Flom, A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States 
(Iowa City, la., 1909), 121-123. 




FIG. 13. POPULATION, 1850 



PIONEER ORIGINS 51 

tied by the Norwegians so exclusively that in 1850 the census 
taker found 404 persons of Norwegian birth, to 347 of all other 
nativities including American, of which there were 161 — 
mostly children of the Norwegian families. That town had 6 
American families to 140 foreign born, but there were a few 
Germans and as many Irish.^- We obtain an even more strik- 
ing result for the town of Pleasant Springs, in Dane County. 
In a population of 732 the Norwegians numbered 471 and there 
were practically no other foreigners. Almost all of these 
people were farmers, some being farm laborers and some of 
the women household servants. In the older settlements they 
frequently took up left-over lands, as in the town of White- 
water, where they bought the rough hill lands and the swampy 
lands of the southeast part of the town. But they were not 
deterred from taking open prairie where it was available and 
openings — the favorite lands — were scarce. In short, the 
Norwegians, by their thrift, physical vigor, and enterprise, 
were destined to become one of the determining elements in 
the building up of Wisconsin agriculture. Their near rela- 
tions from Denmark and Sweden, who had only begun to 
appear by 1850, have also contributed a share proportioned to 
their numbers. 

The Irish were not so exclusively agricultural. The county 
of Waukesha, where they formed the largest group of foreign 
born (numbering 1866), had only about 220 farmers of Irish 
birth. That includes all who are listed as "farmers" in the 
census, but the list includes frequently the older sons as well 
as the owners or lessees of the farms. On the other hand, the 
single town of Brookfield had in it 238 men of Irish nativity 
who were described as laborers on the railroad, doing work 
as graders. That town had but 22 Irish farmers. The pro- 
portion of railway laborers to farmers was different in the 
other towns, Brookfield happening to be the place where grad- 
ing was especially active at the census date. Yet, it is clear 
that most of those who were recent arrivals from Ireland were 

"See table, Wisconsin Domesday Book, Town Studies, I (in press). 



52 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

performing wage labor which was usually not agricultural. 
Of the 22 Irish farmers in Brookfield, at least 14 had been in 
the country from three to twenty years, as shown by the ages 
and nativities of their children. Seven had lived for a number 
of years in Wisconsin, 6 in New York, 1 in Pennsylvania. 
Taking the 220 Irish farmers in the county as a whole, we find 
that in 147 cases at least they were well established as Ameri- 
cans by length of residence. How many of the balance were 
similarly acclimatized we cannot tell ; doubtless many of them 
were. Later censuses reveal the adaptable Irish participating 
largely in the life of the state. But they are not so distinc- 
tively agricultural as the Germans, Swiss, or Norwegians. 
Probably the circumstance that * * assisted-immigration ' ' from 
Ireland, on account of the potato famine, came just at the time 
of the rapid development of railway building helps to explain 
why so large a proportion of the newcomers became railway 
laborers rather than frontier farmers. 

The immigration into Wisconsin from the German states 
and provinces began, on a large scale, about 1847, though a 
good many Germans had reached the territory prior to that 
time.^^ The first cause of the movement was religious and 
political rather than economic. Some congregations of Old 
Lutherans, who were discriminated against at home, were the 
earliest arrivals. The revolutionary tendencies of the age and 
their rigorous suppression caused widespread discontent 
among liberals, especially in the states bordering the Rhine, 
and the freedom of the American system of government ap- 
pealed strongly to such men. Wisconsin was just beginning 
to settle ; the climate, soil, and market conditions were f avor- 

" Kate A. Everest Levi, ' ' Geographical Origin of German Immigration to Wis- 
consin," in Wis. Hist. Colls., xiv, 341-393. The earliest is said to have been the 
Old Lutheran congregation from Magdeburg and vicinity, who arrived at Mil- 
waukee in 1839. Some remained there. Most settled the Freistadt colony in Wash- 
ington County (now Ozaukee) a few miles north of Milwaukee on the Milwaukee 
Biver. Later accessions of co-religionists went to Jefferson and Dodge counties, 
and also to Sheboygan and Manitowoc. In Ozaukee they occupied the town of 
Mequon; in Washington, Kirchayn; in Dodge, Lebanon; in Jefferson, Ixonia. 
Later many went from the earlier settled towns to Sherman, Sheboygan County, 
and to Cooperatown in Manitowoc. Other north German settlements were formerl 
in Winnebago County and vicinity, in Fond du Lac, and elsewhere. 



W^B^B^'^ r \j 


n 


. m 


^■■^'^^ 



THE ELLIAG ElIjSUN ilOME_, JEFFERSON 
PRAIRIE^ 1846 

Engraving loaned by Henry Natestca 




GRIFFITH RIPIIARD.S, WELSH PIONEER OF 1840 

From an oil i ainting in possession of Mrs. Laura 
Richards, Madison 




CASPER HENRY MEYER 

Gerniaii pioneer of 1842. Afterwards a prominent 
farmer of Meqiion, Ozaukee County 



PIONEER ORIGINS 53 

able ; and the state 's land policy as well as her political hospi- 
tality toward foreigners constituted a strong inducement. 
The movement once set on foot, large numbers were tempted 
to embark in it for the sole purpose of bettering their worldly 
condition, so that the earlier motives of religious and political 
freedom became subordinate to the economic motive. Books 
and pamphlets were published in Germany, describing the ad- 
vantages of Wisconsin for German immigrants. Men of re- 
pute from different sections of Germany came over to spy out 
the land and give direction and guidance to their emigrating 
countrymen, while state authorities in Wisconsin made it their 
special care to allure these people. Thus the movement came 
to be more or less systematized." 

The bulk of the Germans who came in the late forties were 
from south and middle Germany, "Ehenish Prussia," Swit- 
zerland, Bavaria, Luxemburg, Baden, and Saxony.^ ^ They 
represented nearly every class and all occupations, though a 
very large proportion were farmers in their home land and 
most of them were anxious to acquire lands in the new world. 
A certain proportion, however, settled in Milwaukee, while the 
main body swept over the forested area pivoting on Milwau- 
kee as a market, through Milwaukee, Waukesha, Jefferson, 
Washington, Dodge, and Ozaukee counties. Wishing to be 
near a market, they at first kept close to the lake ports, many 
of them buying partly improved farms at the prevailing rates 
rather than going into the interior to take wild land at gov- 
ernment prices. Some settled in Sheboygan and Manitowoc 
counties, others farther west, in Dane, Sauk, and even Buffalo. 
Gradually, as transportation improved, they filtered into prac- 
tically all of the farming areas, and also made up their full 
quota in the commercial and manufacturing towns. In the 
earlier censuses, however, we find the vast majority of Ger- 
man immigrants in the country either farming on their own 
account or working on the farms of others. 

" Kate A. Everest Levi, ' ' How Wisconsin Came by Its Large German Ele- 
ment, ' ' in Wis. Hist. Colls., xii, 299-334. 

" Cf. William Dames, Wie Sieht es in JVisJconsin Aus. 



54 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Some of the towns particularly studied from the census of 
1850 yield these results : Franklin, in Milwaukee County, had 
191 farmers. Of these, 88 were Irish and 55 German. From 
England came 8, from New York 15, and all other nativities 
numbered 25. Brooklield, in Waukesha County, had 42 Ger- 
man farmers; New Glarus, in Green County, 66 (German- 
Swiss) ; Newton, in Manitowoc, had a large German majority. 
On the other hand. Mount Pleasant, in Racine County, showed 
only 16 German farmers ; Plymouth, in Rock County, none ; 
Empire, in Fond du Lac County, 3; Norway, Racine County, 
24; Sugar Creek, Walworth County, none. In other words, 
the census of 1850 found the Germans located in the forested 
area of the eastern part of the state. In prairies and openings 
there were yet only a few. 

In 1850 the Welsh, according to the census, had 4319 of 
their people in Wisconsin. The immigration of Welsh to Wis- 
consin appears to have begun in 1840, the year following the 
beginnings of the German and Norwegian immigrations. 
Griffith Richards and several others came to Mount Pleasant 
Town, Racine County, in that year, while John Hughes settled 
in Waukesha County, in the town of Genesee. These families 
were joined by others, and from the southeast the movement 
trended northwestward, the attraction always being good 
lands at government prices. By 1856 the largest colony was 
in Waukesha County, 680 persons; while Columbia County 
had the second largest, 676. Racine, the original land of 
promise, because its free lands were quickly exhausted had 
only 434. There were settlements in Winnebago, Fond du 
Lac, Waushara, and Marquette counties in the north, also in 
La Crosse and Monroe in the west. A considerable colony of 
Welsh miners, who soon however became farmers, settled in 
Iowa and Lafayette counties in the lead region.^^ 

" Laura J. Phillips, Colonisation of Wisconsin by the Welsh, MS. thesis. Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, 1910. Map shows distribution of Welsh. In Racine County 
the town of Mount Pleasant was the Welsh center; in Waukesha, Genesee, also 
Ottawa and Delafield; in Jefferson, Ixonia, Watertown, and Emmet; in Columbia, 
Cambria, Randolph, Scott, Caledonia, Portage, Wyocena, Courtland, Springvale; 
in Winnebago and Fond du Lac, Nikima and Rosendale; in La Crosse, Bangor; 
in Monroe, Cataract, and Lafayette. 



PIONEER ORIGINS 55 

The Welsh seem to have arrived mainly as separate fam- 
ilies, though some evidence of organization appears in the 
beginning. But they tended to seek out settlements of their 
own people, where they could enjoy their own churches, and 
from older settlements new ones were started. Though the 
Welsh element was small in numbers, their influence on Wis- 
consin agriculture was considerable. Among those in Racine 
County, for example, were some of the most advanced stock 
breeders in the state.^^ Their social influence was exhibited 
most strikingly in their musical organizations.^^ 

Unlike the Welsh, who were grouped mainly in a few coun- 
ties, and in particular towns of those counties, the Scotch were 
in 1850 widely distributed over the state, though the total 
number, only 3527, was less than the Welsh. Nearly every 
town studied intensively had a few Scotch families, but only 
four counties in the state had more than 300 — Waukesha, 453 ; 
Rock, 343; Columbia, 339; and Milwaukee, 314. The Scotch 
were found in the towns as well as in the country. They 
tended to enter all professions and occupations. In finance 
Alexander Mitchell, a Scotchman, was for many years the 
greatest single power in the state. However, probably partly 
on account of their dispersed condition, few early Wisconsin 
Scotchmen were found in the political field. Agriculturally 
they exerted an influence beyond their numbers, for Scotch- 
men were generally good farmers as well as tireless workers. 
John Muir, in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, presents 
a faithful though by no means agreeable picture of the unend- 
ing toil endured on his father's pioneer farm in Marquette 
County. The leading shorthorn breeder of the Northwest 
during the seventies was George Murray, a Scotchman of Ra- 
cine; and many others could be named who by their intelli- 

" Eichard Richards, for example, son of the original immigrant Griffith Rich- 
ards, was a foremost breeder of shorthorn cattle, Berkshire pigs, and thorough- 
bred horses. See Mount Pleasant Town. Charles H. Williams of Sauk County, 
another prominent shorthorn breeder, was of Welsh origin, but several generations 
back. 

'*' The Welsh Musical Union was formed in 1865, with the objects of promoting 
the study of church music, encouraging composition and publication, and giving 
musical festivals. 



56 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

gence, skill, and enterprise advanced the interests of scientific 
agriculture in the state. 

We have already explained the preponderance of English 
among the foreign elements in the three lead producing coun- 
ties — Iowa, Grant, and Lafayette — which together had 6665, 
or more than one-third of the whole number of natives of Eng- 
land in the state. These were largely miners and smelters 
who became farmers in due time. Among the purely agri- 
cultural counties the largest English element was in Wauke- 
sha, 1741; the second largest in Racine, 1498; and the third in 
Dane, 1085. There were also goodly numbers in Kenosha, 
Walworth, Rock, Jefferson, and Fond du Lac counties. Other 
counties had fewer, but all had some. 

Like the Scotch, the English were usually widely dispersed, 
as individuals or families, among the prevailingly American 
population, the identity of language and similarity of tradi- 
tions operating to make both the English and the Scotch or- 
ganic elements in the American social order. The Welsh were 
less easily assimilable, and the Cornish miners, as a distinctive 
occupational class, also remained for a time somewhat aloof 
from the Americans. 

Some efforts were made to colonize English people in Wis- 
consin. One such led to a settlement in Dane County, at Mazo- 
manie, under the auspices of the British Temperance Emigra- 
tion Society. The settlers were largely artizans from Liver- 
pool. Agents of the society came out in advance, bought land, 
erected log houses, and in other ways prepared for the coming 
of the emigrant families. This settlement was established in 
the years 1843-50.^^ A kind of offshoot, by suggestion, of the 
Dane County movement was the English settlement formed 
about the same time near Fox River in Racine County. Most 
of those people, also, were artizans.^" The decade of the for- 
ties was in Great Britain a time of unrest and discouragement 

" See William Kittle, The History of the Toionship and Village of Mazomanie 
(Madison, Wis., 1900). 

*° One of their leaders was Edwin Bottomley, whose letters and papers are 
published in Wis. Hist. Colls., xxv. 



PIONEER ORIGINS 57 

for artizans, as well as for the agricultural laborers, and the 
English emigration of the period contained a large proportion 
of each, together with families possessed of more means who 
came from both country and town. An Owenite-^ community 
was started in Waukesha County, town of Genesee. A larger 
English settlement occupied most of the town of Lisbon in the 
same county. Probably the selection, in 1842, by the Epis- 
copal church, of the Nashotah lakes as the site of their theolog- 
ical institution, and the establishment of the bishop's resi- 
dence near by in 1846, had some influence in attracting English 
settlers to that section of Wisconsin and helped to make Wau- 
kesha County, in the early days, the banner English county 
of the state. 

In the general summary we have spoken of the natives of 
Canada (8277) as non-English, and it is probably correct to 
regard most of them as French, particularly those who belong 
to the fur trade tradition. Yet, there must have been a good 
many English from Canada, also Scotch and possibly Irish. 
Brown and Winnebago counties together had more than 1000 
Canadians, Dodge and Fond du Lac had 1300, while Crawford 
and Grant had about 400. The farming counties of the south- 
east all had respectable numbers of them. 

The Dutch (from Holland) were a small element, given 
incorrectly in the census summary at 1157 all told. Most of 
them, some 1300, were in the three counties of Milwaukee, 
Sheboygan, and Brown. All the rest of the counties contained 
but 300, of which Fond du Lac had one-half.^^ 

The major American element in the population was the 
Northeasterners. As already pointed out, the Americans were 
in the majority in all counties save three — Manitowoc, 
Milwaukee, and Washington — and in 21 counties the New 
Yorkers, added to the natives of Wisconsin, made up a ma- 
jority of the Americans. It requires no argument to show 

** A community on the communistic basis, following the principles embodied by 
Robert Dale Owen in his Indiana colony at New Harmony. 

" C. A. Verwyst, ' ' Reminiscences of a Pioneer Missionary, ' ' Wisconsin His- 
torical Society, Proceedings, 1916, 148-165. 



58 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

that natives of Wisconsin were in 1850 prevailingly in the 
stages of childhood and youth. So that, practically, af- 
fairs were in control of the New Yorkers supported by 
other eastern people and by those from Ohio and the 
northwestern states. Vermonters were about one-sixth as 
numerous as New Yorkers; other New Englanders, taken 
together, made up about as many as the Vermonters; 
while Pennsylvanians, Jerseyites, etc. were approximately 
as many more. In other words, wherever there were six New 
Yorkers there was apt to be another middle states man, a 
Vermonter, another New Englander, and an Ohioan, who also 
in most cases, like the bulk of the New Yorkers, was probably 
of New England origin. 

The two states of Vermont and New York are so peculiarly 
the ''cradle" of Wisconsin's society in its early stages, with 
all that fact implies as respects her institutions agriculturally 
and otherwise, that some special study of those states is called 
for by way of background. And, first, it may be said that it 
was the northern and western counties of New York and the 
western counties of Vermont which sent the great bulk of the 
immigrants into the new commonwealth growing up tributary 
to Lake Michigan. It was these western counties, in the two 
states, which by reason of their stage of development were 
among all eastern communities in the best situation to release 
population for colonizing purposes at the time Wisconsin was 
in the making. 

Vermont was the earlier of the two regions to be settled, 
but its actual development as an agricultural community was 
slower than that of western New York, so that the canal build- 
ing epoch found them similarly situated though the oppor- 
tunity for rapid progress in the fine, tillable lands of the Em- 
pire State was superior to that in the rough, much divided and 
dissected, though not infertile, area east of Lake Champlain. 
Until the canal came, both regions had been nearly but not 
quite cut off from markets. The western Vermonters could 
reach the Hudson by making the long haul to Albany or Troy; 




O ' ?"> 

Ph o 
O O 




OLD SWISS CHURCH, NEW GLARUS, WISCONSIN 



PIONEER ORIGINS 59 

the New Yorkers could haul to the Mohawk, or flat-boat their 
grain, flour, and pork down the Susquehanna, the Delaware, 
or the Allegheny River. The process of marketing, by all 
these expedients, was uncertain and expensive. The remedy 
was canals, and the great New York project for canal build- 
ing embraced as one feature the construction of a canal from 
Albany to Whitehall, where it communicated with the far- 
extended waters of Lake Champlain. The other important 
feature was the Erie Canal. One opened a line of transporta- 
tion from the central portions of western New York, connect- 
ing with the Hudson ; the other made a convenient outlet for 
all that portion of Vermont which was within hauling distance 
of the numerous ports on Lake Champlain. That meant prac- 
tically the greater part of Vermont, west of the ridge of the 
Green Mountains — at least the five western counties of Frank- 
lin, Chittenden, Addison, Rutland, and Bennington. A glance 
at the map (Fig. 14) will show that Lake Champlain is itself a 
natural canal of extraordinary length. With the artificial 
link uniting it with the Hudson, it was bound to prove of in- 
finite economic importance to both New York and Vermont. 

In consequence of the opening, about 1820, of this new line 
of transportation, agriculture in Vermont underwent a rapid 
and radical transformation. In the time before the canal the 
farm was a self-sufficing unit, the family producing in field 
and household almost everything required for its sustenance. 
Little was raised which could be sold for cash, except cattle. 
These, purchased by the drovers, were driven to the New 
York market or to Boston. An annual trip by the farmer to 
Albany with a load of dairy products, maple sugar, or pork 
was the only other means of furnishing the family with those 
absolutely essential supplies which could be secured only from 
outside. 

The farm homes were scattered widely, not only through 
the valleys but over the sides of steep hills and mountains and 
even on their summits. In building homes the pioneers had 
little reference to ease of communication with the outside 



60 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



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PIONEER ORIGINS 61 

world, a trip out being only an occasional event. They built 
wherever the land seemed productive and where the labor of 
clearing was not too great. One of the most impressive social 
effects of the opening of canal transportation, as noticed by 
Vermont historians, was the way the inhabitants deserted the 
highlands, leaving vacant houses scattered over the moun- 
tains. The hill roads were closed and new ones opened on the 
lower grounds, making a system of highways leading to the 
shipping points. At the same time the inhabitants were con- 
centrated in the mountain valleys, along the river courses, 
and near the long shore line of Lake Champlain. 

That change illustrates the change which was occurring in 
Vermont agriculture. Wheat raising was no longer as profit- 
able as it had been. On the other hand, with water transpor- 
tation dairy products, pork, mutton, potatoes, and onions 
could be shipped regularly and cheaply to the New York 
market. The rich valley lands which grew hay, corn, and root 
crops rose rapidly in value. The hill lands also advanced in 
price, but these were now worth decidedly more for pasturage 
than for cultivation. They supplied much of the summer feed 
for cows and young stock, for horses, and especially for the 
fine wooled merino sheep, in the rearing of which Vermont 
farmers were becoming famous. Farmers whose lands were 
mostly hill lands could not take full advantage of the new 
agricultural opportunity. Small farmers were handicapped 
for livestock and dairy farming as compared with those hav- 
ing larger holdings and the proper varieties of land within 
the same farm. Under the advancing prices, however, it was 
a temptation to sell the farms which for any reason seemed 
unsatisfactory. Also, those farmers who did not care to read- 
just their agriculture to the new conditions were now able to 
sell out readily, go west, and raise wheat along with those 
who were eager to get away because their farms were ill 
adapted to a livestock economy. 

That there was much consolidating and remodeling of the 
farms is shown not only by the vacant, decaying farmhouses 



62 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

on the hills and the new ones in the valleys, but also by the 
fact that the agricultural population in these counties actually 
decreased between 1830 and 1850. Besides, the testimony of 
writers in the forties is that many of the dairy farms were 
relatively large, supporting 40 or more cows, while flocks of 
100 to 200 sheep were extremely common.-^ The whole point 
is, that when farming became a business instead of merely a 
way of getting a primitive living, it soon shifted to the basis 
of a livestock economy, which requires for success — at least 
under conditions prevailing at that time — a considerable 
amount of land.^^ 

The facts just stated give the reasons for the rapid emigra- 
tion of Vermonters to t)\e West during the period of readjust- 
ment following the opening of the canal. A similar situation 
was to be found in western New York at the same period. 
New York counties, too, were by 1840 losing rural population. 
The local historians bewail the fact that, but for the rapid 
growth of towns and villages their counties would soon be in 
serious distress from the loss of so many of their inhabitants. " 
They explain that the opening of new markets to their farm- 
ers, as branch canals were completed from time to time, 
changed the character of farming from the earlier wheat 
growing basis to the livestock and dairying basis, which re- 
quired more land. The larger farmers had in many cases 
bought out the small farmers, "to enlarge their own fields. 
The latter class emigrated to the west where land is cheap. "^^ 

=^ See Hosea Beckley, History of Vermont (Brattleboro, Vt., 1846), especially 
p, 27, 58-60, 140-141. 

^* With the soiling system, the silo, and high-producing dairy cows the present- 
day farmer can make a success of dairying on a small farm. 

^'^ Hiram C. Clark, History of Chenango County (Norwich, N. Y., 1850), 73. 
The same testimony comes from Emory F. Warren, Sketches of the History of 
Chautauque County (Jamestown, N. Y., 1846), 133. Speaking of the census of 
1840, which showed an increase for the county of only 2672 in five years, he says: 
' 'The emigration to the west from this county has been large, and it is believed 
much larger than the accession to our numbers in agricultural sections. The pur- 
suits of the agricultural population have tended to diminish rather than increase 
their numbers. The accumulation of real estate in the hands of those engaged in 
grazing, has materially diminished the number of those who held small tracts of 
land, while the latter have sought wider, and more fertile fields in the valley of the 
Mississippi. ' ' 




FARM HOME AT EAST WINTIIROP; MAINE 

Built before 1819 



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FARM HOilE AT BLOOMFIELD, CONKECTICUT^ NEAR HARTFORD 
Built in the eiahteentli centurv 




OLD HOME IX DELAWARE COUNTY^ X F,\V YORK 




A PENNSYLVANIA FARM HOME 
House built before 1815 



PIONEER ORIGINS 63 

Eailway building followed canal building and stimulated im- 
provement in a revolutionary manner for a number of years.^" 

Doubtless, also, the ease with which farms could be made in 
the region of prairies and openings had its influence in induc- 
ing farmers to part with lands only half cleared, and go west 
rather than challenge the heavy task of clearing the balance. 
This is said to have been one chief influence affecting emigra- 
tion from Ohio, which likewise yielded many valuable farmers 
to early Wisconsin, and conditions in New York were nearly 
the same as in Ohio.-'^ 

Wisconsin, at the moment, was a favored western land for 
these New York and Vermont people, as well as for other 
Easterners and emigrants from Ohio.^^ Lake Michigan was 
quite as advantageous for commerce, save for the greater 
length of shipping route, as Lake Champlain or the Grand 
Canal, while the destination of freight consigned to vessels 
at her ports was the same as for that consigned to the canal at 
Whitehall or at Utica. 

If one could recover the everyday thoughts of these people, 
to whom canal transportation, the Erie Canal, the Great Lakes 
system, and the far western lands along the Great Lakes were, 
of course, daily topics of conversation, we would probably dis- 
cover that the generation then on the stage in western Ver- 
mont and New York were better prepared, psychologically, 
for making new homes on the distant shores of Lake Michi- 
gan than Connecticut people of fifty years earlier had been 
for moving into western New York, or into Vermont itself. 
With cheap water transportation assured, the excellence of 
the lands in Wisconsin or Illinois or Michigan and the chance 
to secure farms embracing in due proportions prairie, mead- 

^^ See article by Exifus King, in Milwnulcce Sentinel, Aus;. 20, ISHl, entitled 
' ' The New York and Erie Railroad. ' ' He shows how the country between Dunkirk 
and Elmira was changing (new houses building, new lands brought under improve- 
ment, new plank roads begun, etc.) as a result of the opening of the railroad. 

"See Sir James Caird, Prairie Farming in America (New York, 1859), 119. 
Ohio had lost 140,000 people in seven years, from 1850 to 1857. Small farmers 
were selling to larger farmers and going west to the prairies. 

^^ R. L. Allen, in American Agriculturist, 1843, 236-287. 



64 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

ow, and woodland^^ constituted a lure which was overpower- 
ing. The sale of a small farm in the home land, at prevailing 
prices, would enable the emigrant to buy a generous quantity 
of government land or speculator land, erect buildings and 
fences, and farm on a larger scale than formerly.^*^ Those 
who preferred wheat raising to general farming — and they 
were legion — found on the prairies and openings of the West, 
near the lake ports, an unrivaled opportunity. So they came, 
these intelligent, moral, industrious, and enterprising East- 
erners. They overran the southeastern counties of Wisconsin 
in short order, picking the finest lands in the most ideal com- 
binations, also looking for honest speculations in mill sites 
and town sites. They came to Wisconsin in such numbers 
that, in the short space of fifteen years, our state had almost 
as large a total population as Vermont.^ ^ 

" Woodland in western New York was quite as valuable as good farm land. See 
John Fowler, Journal of a Tour in the State of New YorJc, 1830 (London, 1831). 

" The Vermont papers in 1837 contain numerous advertisements of farms for 
sale. Also, a through packet line of canal boats was put on to carry westward 
bound passengers from the ports on Lake Champlain to Buffalo. These boats 
moved forward day and night, reaching Buffalo in six days from Vergennes. 

"Wisconsin, in 1850, had 305,391; Vermont, by the same census, had 314,120. 



CHAPTER IV 

PIONEER CONDITIONS 

A young man from the Mohawk valley, in New York, ar- 
rived in Wisconsin in the summer of 1840, and on his numer- 
ous jaunts about the Territory during that and succeeding 
years observed widely as well as closely the conditions pre- 
vailing in different sections of the country. In the beautifully 
written diary which he kept during those years we have the 
record of his impressions of places and things. He says: 
** Frequently was the oft- told story of my grandparents 
brought to mind as I beheld here their habits & customs yet 
extant, & their mode of living again adopted and made agree- 
able by circumstances; as I saw the humble log-houses and 
huge fire-places, out-door ovens and earth-covered cellars 
gathered in small groups beside the winding highway of the 
adventurous pioneer. ' '^ 

This quotation gives us at once the lineage of early Wis- 
consin civilization (which derived from New England) and 
the time interval by which, as it appeared to this writer, 
pioneer conditions in Wisconsin in the early forties were sepa- 
rated from those which prevailed at that time in the most ad- 
vanced sections of the Northeast. The diarist's grandparents 
belonged to the era of Washington's presidency. If we had a 
clear picture of the external conditions of life in western Mas- 
sachusetts in the stirring days of Shays 's rebellion, or in 
Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York about the same 
time, we should also have a fairly adequate notion of what 
life was in Wisconsin Territory between 1835 and 1850. Some 
such picture we may obtain by reading, for example, Timothy 
Dwight's Travels in New England and New York, executed 
mainly between 1795 and 1800. Dr. Dwight, when he drove his 

* Frederick J. Starin, MS. Diary. Lent to this Society by his daughter, Mrs. 
Imogene Starin Birge of Whitewater, Wisconsin. The publication of this diary 
was begun in the Wis. Mag. of Hist., September, 1922. 



66 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

horse and light two-wheeled vehicle north into upper New 
Hampshire, experienced the distressing ''corduroy" road. 
He also saw by the wayside the round-log, "chinked and 
mudded" houses standing in fields partially cleared but still 
encumbered by stumps and girdled trees. These were the 
symbols of the actual frontier. He had but just passed decent 
hewed-log houses and fields fully cleared, back of which again, 
in that "land of steady habits" from which he set out, were 
the tidy villages of older New England, their white-painted 
cottages adorned with green window shutters, the inevitable 
"village green" flanked by town-house, church, and school, 
and in the distance smiling, well tilled fields, rich pastures, 
and sheltering wood lots. 

If we allow fifteen years as the period during which the 
greater part of southern Wisconsin was in the pioneer stage 
of development, we may discover in that period most of those 
variations in the artificial surroundings of the people which 
Dwight found in New England and New York fifty years ear- 
lier. There were the crude beginnings of agriculture on the 
part of those who, devoid of financial means, relied almost 
solely on their personal strength and fortitude to make a liv- 
ing from timber and soil. Suited to this class was the rough 
cabin of unhewn logs, covered with "shakes," chinked, and 
daubed with mud, floored with "puncheons," and fitted with 
a few awkward homemade stools and benches, a board across 
the flour barrel and the pork barrel for a table, mth beds of 
leaves or of straw.^ Those, however, who were accustomed to 
good homes in the East, or in Europe, and who had the means 
to do so, promptly erected more pretentious houses. These 
might be made of dressed logs, neatly pointed up with mortar, 
and fitted with sawed-board floors and doors, glass windows, 
and decent furniture. If lumber in quantity was procurable, 
such settlers delayed scarcely a year or two, or at most a few 

^ Such rude shelters were customarily erected also by the abler sort of claim 
takers when they came out to take their claims and before buying their lands 
and bringing their families. 




THE FIRST WISCONSIN HOME OP JOHN MUIR, 1849 

From his Story of My Boyhood and Youth. By courtesy of the 

Houghton Mifflin Conijiany 




A TYPICAL PRAIRIE FARM HOME^ 1850 




HOME OF WILLIAJt WILCOX ON THE LEMOXWEIR^ JUNEAU COUNTY 



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"■■^""•ft*" ■I'^^^'S^SBHi 



THE FIRST HOUSE IN WHITEWATER (RECONSTRUCTION) 
On State Normal School grounds 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 67 

years, before building comfortable frame houses or, in some 
cases, houses of brick or of stone. 

There were frame buildings in Racine and Kenosha coun- 
ties in 1836, in Waukesha County in 1838. The town of White- 
water, Walworth County, received its first settlers in 1836. 
These were the claim makers, who came without their families 
and erected only such shelters as were indispensable. The 
next year and the two years which followed saw much build- 
ing of respectable log houses, barns, and rail fences. Nearly 
all settlers in southeastern Wisconsin were compelled to wait 
till 1839 before they could buy at the Milwaukee land office the 
lands they had claimed and improved. Naturally, building 
was apt to be of a temporary character until land titles were 
secured. Thereafter, frame structures went up apace. The 
first of these at Whitewater was the gristmill, raised in June, 

1839. The next was a frame barn, raised in June, 1840. Then 
followed, the same year, farmhouses, a house for a tavern, etc. 
Some of these buildings had frames of heavy hewed timbers 
and were covered with sawed pine lumber. Frederick Starin, 
who records the raising of the barn referred to, on June 18, 

1840, noted ''several frame houses" on Heart Prairie at the 
same time. He also saw others in Walworth County, though 
as yet they were scattering. 

The earliest frame buildings, both at Whitewater and else- 
where in the southeast,^ were usually constructed out of lum- 
ber sawed in little neighboring mills. Lumber being a prime 
necessity to a new community, the numerous mill sites usually 
had sawmills established upon them first of all. Later, grist- 
mills were erected on some of them. The local sawmills used 
oak, sometimes walnut, also basswood, elm, and maple — what- 
ever kinds of timber grew near by or were brought in by the 
settlers to be sawed. 

These mills did not remain long in the prairie and hardwood 
sections. For, about the date of the earliest settlements in 
those regions, Chicago companies began lumbering in the con- 

• Except Kenosha, where lumber is said to have been received from Sheboygan 
before the end of the year 1835. See Wis. Hist. Colls., ii, 464. ' 



68 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

venient pinery on the shore of Lake Michigan in Sheboygan 
and Manitowoc counties."* From those places good pine lum- 
ber was soon supplied to all the lake ports — Milwaukee, Ra- 
cine, and Kenosha — where settlers bought it when marketing 
their wheat to haul back to their farms by way of return loads. 
By the year 1844, it is said, even a community as far from the 
lake as Whitewater bought pine lumber freely at Milwaukee, 
in preference to using the cheaper product of local mills.^ 
Even prior to that time, the prairie farmers near Racine and 
Kenosha were using pine lumber from the northern mills, 
which sold very cheaply, for building houses, barns, and even 
fences. The farmers in the heavy timber had motives for 
patronizing the local mills much longer, but these farmers, 
having a superabundance of timber, were very apt to use un- 
sawed logs for building. Sawmills were early opened also in 
the pineries on Wisconsin and Chippewa rivers, from 
which lumber was supplied to all settlements along the Wis- 
consin and the Mississippi. Much of the product of these 
mills, after a few years, was rafted down to Iowa, Illinois, and 
Missouri, so abundant did pine lumber become. The Wiscon- 
sin settlers, being nearer, secured it at the cheaper rates. 
There is no doubt that the combination of farming with lum- 
bering in the industrial history of early Wisconsin was fruit- 
ful in many ways, among them in getting the farming popula- 
tion out of the first rough shelter of logs within a shorter time 
than must be allotted to the '* log-house era" of primitive so- 
ciety in other wooded sections of America. 

The first frame houses were built on the prairies, as one 
would expect. But in southeastern and southern Wisconsin 
the prairies were so intermingled with the oak openings and 
the denser woods that the prairie farmers, setting the style, 
were quickly followed by the neighbors who might have 
built of logs. On the larger prairies, like that of La Crosse, 

* The mill at Sheboygan was ready for business in the spring of 1835. The 
Manitowoc lumber business began about two years later. John Lawe'smill at 
Two Rivers seems to have been built even earlier than the above — perhaps in 1833. 

" But pine lumber from Milwaukee was used at Whitewater earlier than 1844. 
Letter of Julius C. Birge, dated Mar. 13, 1922. 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 69 

even the earliest houses, or "claim shanties," were built of 
pine lumber, which was much cheaper than logs would have 
been.^ Some of the settlers in these later occupied regions 
went from the older Wisconsin counties, and often built good, 
substantial frame houses at once. This suggests that decent, 
comfortable houses were probably the rule by about 1850 in 
the older communities wherever the lands were not heavily 
wooded and where a market for grain was within reach. For, 
here as elsewhere, one's habitation was usually an indication 
of his prosperity or the reverse.'^ 

In the matter of furniture, those who came to Wisconsin 
from Ohio, Pennsylvania, or western New York by team were 
able to bring only a very few articles with them. In many 
cases, however, household goods were shipped by canal and 
lake to one of the ports, and hauled to the destination by team. 
Many stories are told of the difficulties encountered in carry- 
ing household goods from Racine or Milwaukee or elsewhere, 
by ox team, to Janesville, Whitewater, Aztalan, and other in- 
terior points, over miry wood roads, through marshes, and 
across swollen unbridged streams. The frequent instances of 
steamboats carrying such freight past the Wisconsin port for 
which it was booked, and unloading it at Chicago, caused 
sharp distress and much extra expense to immigrants. David 
Gardner relates that when his father's family came from New 
York to Wisconsin in 1842 they at first stayed for some weeks 
with friends at Sun Prairie. Deciding finally to settle in Az- 
talan, his father sent a teamster to Milwaukee for the furni- 
ture but he returned at the end of a week empty, no furniture 
being found. Gardner then went with the teamster. They 
searched all through Dousman's warehouse, but to no avail. 

' Morrison McMillan, Wis. Hist. Colls., iv, 387, 

^D. J. Powers, in Wis. State Agric. Soc, Trans., 1853, 154. "We rejoice at 
the present signs of their success; they left the green hills of New England and 
New York for a wilderness which, after years of toil, they have cleared into 
productive fields; and the rude structures, for habitation and shelter, erected in 
days of poverty and want, are now with each revolving year, giving place to taste- 
ful and comfortable dwellings. Yet a few years, and orchards of fruit, waving 
meadows, ornamental groves, and highly cultivated fields will render it difficult for 
a stranger to surmise, from the appearance of the country, the date of its first 
settlement. ' ' 



70 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Finally Dousman wrote to the warehouse man in Chicago and 
learned that the goods had been unloaded at that place. Mr. 
Gardner thereupon sent a team to Chicago to bring them to 
Aztalan — a very expensive operation. However, when his 
family arrived there from Sun Prairie, at the end of a long, 
winter day's sleigh drive, they found everything arranged in 
the little log house which was to be their first Wisconsin home, 
and through the kindness of the neighbors a warm fire was 
glowing on the hearth. The good mother, seeing her house- 
hold things all about her again after so many vicissitudes, 
broke down and cried from sheer thankfulness. 

When the goods were thus brought from the East, the new 
homes were furnished much in the style of those the families 
had just left, save that the equipment was less abundant. But 
large numbers of immigrants came almost empty-handed and 
had to depend for most of the household equipment on their 
own ingenuity. In such cases the crude ''outfit" of the claim 
shanty, already described, had to serve until financial condi- 
tions made possible something better. Stoves — or rather, 
ovens — were something of a luxury. The outdoor oven of 
stone or brick was fairly common. At the raising of a certain 
mill, it was said, the good wife cooked at an outdoor oven a 
wonderful dinner for the men from four townships who assem- 
bled to help in erecting the frame. One woman, who boarded 
fifteen hands working on the first Wisconsin railway, had an 
inside oven, but it was so small that she was able to bake in 
it only one pie at a time. However, these were handicaps 
which were cured by time and prosperity. On the whole, ex- 
cept in distinctly "backwoods" neighborhoods, retarded in 
development by being cut off from markets, it does not appear 
that Wisconsin pioneers suffered seriously for the want of 
ordinary home conveniences. 

The same may be said with respect to food. It has become 
customary, in extolling the virtues of pioneers, to emphasize 
the extreme hardships they endured in their new homes ; and 
the stories which are told of the occasional settler who found 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 71 

it necessary to travel many miles in severe weather to pro- 
cure food have been generalized to color all narratives, as if 
this were the usual case. There are instances of real heroism 
exhibited by men whose duty it was to provide for others in 
times of scarcity. But on the whole the supplying of food 
rarely constituted an extreme problem. There never was a 
** starving time" in early Wisconsin. For one thing, game 
was abundant and to the skilled hunter easily procurable. If 
deer became scarce in any neighborhood, due to the absence of 
favorable coverts, prairie chickens were plentiful in such 
situations. Of wood pigeons there were literally millions, 
and water fowl were innumerable. Distances between our 
new settlements and the older settlements in Illinois and In- 
diana were not so great as to make it impossible to procure 
flour and pork by wagon or by sledge overland in winter, 
when ice on the lake cut off boat communication with the East. 
People in those older communities, too, were always keenly in- 
terested in the marketing possibilities of the new northern 
settlements and brought in, aside from herds of stock cattle, 
droves of hogs, and flocks of sheep, many a load of "Hoosier" 
or ''Sucker" pork and flour. Hog and cattle driving was a 
regular business. Some of the animals were "ornary," to be 
sure. The hogs have been described as "prairie racers" so 
lean on their arrival that, if slaughtered at once, fat to fry 
their meat with had to be added. But it was possible to get 
them in condition and they were also used for breeding. The 
cattle were better and served for work oxen, milch cows, and 
stock cattle. Probably a majority of the herds of southeast- 
ern Wisconsin in 1850 could be traced to such importations. 
Settlers were always anxious quickly to become independ- 
ent of the outside world in the matter of regular food supplies. 
As soon, therefore, as a crop had been produced, the flour and 
corn mill became a prime necessity. So well was this under- 
stood, that no neighborhood was considered established until 
it could boast a gristmill. It was the first institution, save the 
school, in which all settlers had an interest, and unlike the 



72 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

school the mill called for a relatively large investment and 
usually also for the control of the one tract of land containing 
a water power. Under these circumstances, it is not strange 
that the building of a mill, although it was financed by private 
individuals, should have been looked upon as more or less a 
public enterprise. The early history of Whitewater illustrates 
these points in a striking manner. In that town it was sup- 
posed there was only a single mill site, on section 4. The land 
containing it was claimed by one of the first comers, who soon 
sold his claim right to another immigrant. Meantime, many 
settlers raised some wheat and corn, so that the need of a mill 
became acute. They saw that the holder of the claim made no 
move to erect one, and it was suspected that he could not 
finance the project. So the settlers held a meeting — their first 
public meeting, by the way. They resolved: (1) that a mill 
was an absolute necessity; (2) that the site on section 4 was 
the only location for it; (3) that the holder of the claim con- 
taining the mill site must by a given date either give bonds to 
build a mill or agree to sell to someone who would give bonds 
to build a mill. If he refused to do either of these things, he 
should be run off the claim! The meeting appointed a com- 
mittee to carry out their policy. The claimant could not build, 
and after considerable haggling he agreed to place his relin- 
quishment in the hands of the committee, on the payment to 
him of the sum of $500. The committee thereupon sought for 
a capitalist who would buy the land and build a mill. They 
found him in the person of Dr. James Tripp ; they bid in the 
land for Mr. Tripp at the Milwaukee land sale in February, 
1839, and put him in possession. He began work at once, and 
by the middle of June was ready to raise the mill, when the 
whole countryside came together to help.^ 

The attitude just described is reflected in the legal code. So 
vital was the social need of gristmills, that the law of Wis- 
consin Territory, in defiance of the common law on that sub- 
ject, favored the owner of a mill as against an individual 

■A great dinner out of doors, followed by ball games on the prairie, closed 
the eventful day. 




FARii HOME OP JOHX M. CLARK^ NEAR WHITEWATER, BUILT IN 18 i7 
Afterwards Charles M. Clark's Home 




PREVIOUS HOME OF JOHN M. CLARK^ PAULET, VERMONT 



.^ifli^^^^^^^^^^^^'^k. 




^^■^^^^ 


tllMlilJI 


W'f^. 



A TYPICAL STONE SCHOOLHOUSB 




wade's halfway HOUSE;, GREEXBUSH^ SHEBOl'GAN COUNTY 
Built 1850 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 73 

landowner. If land was flooded as the result of putting in a 
dam for mill purposes, the owner could not compel the removal 
or the lowering of the dam in order to save his land. He could 
at best appeal to a jury for relief and take damages if the jury- 
decided the dam was not too high for milling purposes. This 
law was upheld by the Wisconsin supreme court.^ 

A good share of the ''claim wars" of early days raged 
round the various mill sites.^^ The lands which contained 
these water privileges were so valuable that contests were 
almost sure to arise. These contests cost money in all cases, 
and broken heads in not a few. Happy was that miller whose 
bid had been accepted at the land office and whose mill was 
built and running. 

One of the severest trials endured by the pioneers of Wis- 
consin was the lack of overland transportation. For not only 
were there no roads save the Indian trails to begin with, but 
the nature of the ground was such that in most places dirt 
roads were sure to be terribly heavy except in the driest part 
of the summer and in winter. The glaciated area of south- 
eastern Wisconsin is, from one aspect, a series of ridges run- 
ning north and south, with depressions between, which were 
apt to contain marshes, streams bordered by wet bottom land, 
or lakes with marshy fringes. All trails which ran toward the 
interior from Lake Michigan crossed such depressions every 
few miles. In very wet weather it required a long string of 
ox teams, from four to eight, to draw a respectable load over 
the roads opened along such trails. On the higher ground, 
especially through the woods, the case was little better, for 
the soft earth would quickly cut down to the axles of the 
wagons. Under such circumstances corduroy was the sole 
relief, and this was a cure which, to the drivers at least, was 
almost worse than the disease. Early road building, how- 
ever, consisted in opening trails or widening Indian trails 

"John B. Winslow, The Story of a Great Court (Madison, Wis., 1912), 28. 
Case of Newcomh v. Smith, 2 Pinney, 131, 

^ Such a war, for example, took place over the Geneva mill site. See James 
Simmons, Annals of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 1835-1897 (Lake Geneva, Wis., 

1897). ->?'-! 



74 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

through the woods, then laying down corduroy across swamps 
and marshes, and either finding f ordable places in the streams 
or throwing corduroy bridges across them. At the larger 
streams ferries were maintained.^ ^ 

By good fortune, military policy required the United States 
government to build very early the so-called Military Road, 
which opened a line of communication from Fort Howard 
(Green Bay) to Fort Winnebago (Portage), and thence by 
the Military Ridge to Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien). To 
this system the government added a road running near Lake 
Michigan from Chicago to Green Bay. So, at the beginning 
of rapid settlement by farmers southern Wisconsin had a 
main road, such as it was, all around the border of its terri- 
tory except the south, and this was mostly prairie with com- 
paratively easy trails across it into Wisconsin Territory. The 
people of the lead region, as pointed out in chapter two, had 
trails leading to the Mississippi, to Chicago, to the Wisconsin, 
and to Fort Winnebago. Their main highway ran north from 
Galena to Mineral Point. This was soon connected with the 
Military Road. It was not uncommon in the early years for 
persons wishing to reach Mineral Point from the lake ports to 
travel the long, circuitous route by Green Bay, Fort Winne- 
bago, and Blue Mounds, instead of attempting the hazardous 
direct trip overland. 

The settling up of the southeastern counties compelled the 
building of roads inland from the ports, and on this enterprise 
Milwaukee exerted a powerful influence. The result was a 
fairly complete system of roads from Milwaukee to the great 
settled areas of the state, as shown on the map (Fig. 15). The 
Janesville road, the Madison road (built promptly after the 

"At Beloit, as early as 1837, a current boat served for a ferry across Rock 
River. This was a type of ferry much used in early Wisconsin. The current boat 
was a flatboat which worked by two ropes ending in pulleys (one rope attached 
at each end of the boat) on a cable or hawser stretched across the stream and 
attached strongly to a tree on either bank. The boat's ropes could be lengthened 
or shortened at will, and when the one was lengthened the pressure of the current 
drove it across in one direction; when the other was lengthened it moved across in 
the opposite direction. Such ferryboats were found on eastern streams just after 
the Revolution. They are still found today in the far West. 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 



75 




76 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

location of the capital at that place), the Mineral Point road 
are famous in the annals of early Milwaukee trade, and as 
settlement spread north into Washington, Dodge, and Fond 
du Lac counties, other highways radiated from the commer- 
cial center on the lake to those regions, and each trunk road 
had many local feeders. Before 1850 the work of planking 
some of these roads was begun, the first determined effort to 
secure ''good roads." Other roads were built from Racine 
and Kenosha into Walworth, Rock, and Green counties. At 
least one of these, the road from Racine to Burlington, was 
planked as early as 1846.^ ^ 

Farmers found the plank roads a comfort, but disliked to 
pay the tolls charged for their use. Though the dirt roads 
were public and free, they were compelled to pay enormous 
tolls in time and in draft stock when they hauled their crops 
to market. The climate, however, was in this respect merciful. 
When the ground was frozen solid and covered deeply with 
snow and ice, a condition was created which usually rendered 
transportation cheap and easy during a number of weeks in 
winter. Then was the time for getting saw-logs to the mill, 
splitting and hauling rails for fencing, bringing home the 
year's supply of wood, assembling building material and, in 
a word, doing all the heavy draying which by any means could 
be deferred to the winter season. 

The winter also was the approved time for clearing land. 
The cold days were favorable for chopping. So the timber 
was felled, the best logs taken to mill, and other heavy logs 
sawed into proper lengths for rolling into log heaps. Small 
stuff was piled into brush heaps. When warm, dry days came 
in spring, great log and brush fires quickly cleared the land, 
leaving a depth of ashes which might be hauled off to be con- 
verted into potash and pearlash for the market. The larger 
stumps, of course, remained either until they rotted out or 
until the settler was able to ''stump" his land by artificial 

"Papers of Edwin Bottomley, Wis. Hist. Colls., xxv. 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 77 

means. ^^ The smaller stumps and "grubs" were removed 
either before breaking the land or during the breaking 
process. 

The rapidity of the clearing operation depended on the 
density of the timber growth. In heavy timber a farmer 
would do remarkably well to chop from three to five acres in 
a winter and clear it in spring. In openings the area might be 
three or four times as much. Some thinly timbered valley 
land in southwestern Wisconsin was cleared about as fast as 
a breaking team could break up the land. On the prairies a 
large farm could be opened in a single season. Frederick 
Starin measured the season's breaking of one Whitewater 
settler and found it amounted to "81 acres, 2 rods, and lli/^ 
poles." 

Suppose that some Timothy Dwight of a later time, instead 
of Travels in New England, had written Travels in Wisconsin, 
what rural pictures would he have seen? Starting northward 
by the Chicago-Green Bay road, through the towns of Keno- 
sha and Racine counties, he would have found the prairies and 
openings well settled with farmsteads about every half-mile 
on the average. The houses and other buildings were nearly 
all frame structures. The pioneer log houses which remained 
were used as stables or storerooms, or occasionally for giving 
temporary shelter to some immigrant family. Near the homes 
were gardens, fruit trees, and groves. The cultivated fields 
were ample, and all were enclosed, usually with rail fences 
though in some cases neat board fences had been run around 
the nearer fields as well as around house and garden. Sod 
fences were used in some new prairie districts. The scene 
was not unlike that which Dwight witnessed in the Connecti- 
cut valley in Massachusetts, save that the farms were gener- 
ally larger and the houses were not clustered in villages. All 
unenclosed lands — and these were still plentiful — made up of 

" One way was to use ox power to draw the stumps out, a moderate amount of 
digging and chopping of holding roots being done by hand. Another was to em- 
ploy laborers to grub them out. Hardwood stumps rotted so rapidly that a 
few years saw a field cleared by the natural process. 



78 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

swamps, dry prairies, woodlands, the highways, and school 
sections, were "commons" for the livestock of the settlers. 

On striking the heavy timber in Milwaukee County the as- 
pect of things changed for our traveler. The farms for a time 
were quite as numerous as before, but hewed log houses 
took the place of frame, the fields were much smaller, the 
commons — mostly woods and swales — more extensive. Every- 
thing betokened a more primitive stage of farming, due not 
to difference in years of settlement but to the external obstacle 
of heavily timbered lands and to the circumstance that these 
were taken up, or purchased, mainly by an economically 
weaker class of settlers than those who occupied the southern 
counties. 

Swinging westward after traversing the big bend to Green 
Bay and south to Lake Winnebago, the traveler found himself 
in the fertile prairies and openings of Fond du Lac and 
Columbia counties. Here once more the prospect brightened. 
Farms multiplied and prosperity, if not fully achieved, was 
approaching, as testified not merely by the demeanor of the 
farmers but by the condition of their homes and their farms. 
For they were living within possible hauling distance of the 
lake ports; their lands, easily cleared and bountiful, had 
produced much grain for the market; and was not the Fox 
River Canal about to open a cheap transportation line to 
Green Bay, and the railroad another to Milwaukee and Chi- 
cago? Americans from New York and Vermont had settled 
in that region in considerable numbers, and added to these 
were Germans of the '48 immigration and other foreigners. 
This region, as well as parts of Dodge, Columbia, and Dane 
counties, was beginning to emerge from the hewed-log stage 
of rurality into that of the frame house. But the change had 
been only partially accomplished. It would not be completed 
for a few years yet, till the railway line, already lengthening 
westward from Milwaukee, should reach far enough west and 
north to serve these extensive areas. 



PIONEER CONDITIONS 79 

The railway was also to awaken to full life the vast agri- 
cultural possibilities of the old lead region, with the big prai- 
rie which lay like a huge blanket over the Military Ridge, and 
the scenic valleys intercepted by the Wisconsin where as yet 
the deer had been rarely startled by the ring of the settler's ax. 
The lead region was still a world of its own, due to its min- 
ing history, but with the new immigration it was settling into 
its true character as an agricultural region. The outlying 
populations, north of the Wisconsin in Crawford, Richland, 
and Sauk counties, were still prevailingly in the round log, 
girdled tree, corduroy stage. 

If, however, without penetrating into the wilderness, enter- 
ing the lead region, or traversing the big prairie by the Mili- 
tary Road, our traveler drove east from Madison on the 
Milwaukee road, his route lay partly through an extensive set- 
tlement of Norwegians living on prairie and opening, who 
though deficient in capital had been making a gallant fight 
against odds in establishing and improving their farms so as 
to take advantage of the new transportation facilities then 
about to be realized. The log house, in both the round and 
the hewed, was the symbol of that struggle. Farther east, in 
Jefferson and Waukesha counties, he found the social land- 
scape variegated. One hour his course would lie through a 
settlement which, judged from its architecture rather than 
from its farming improvements, was primitive to the verge of 
crudeness. The next hour his eye rested upon the tidy frame 
cottages, with groves, gardens, and neatly enclosed fields be- 
tokening the most advanced cultivation to be found in the 
new state. The latter signalized older settlement, more ade- 
quate capital, and a less obdurate problem of clearing, quite 
as much as an ideal of rural life brought from the East. The 
foreign immigrant usually found himself restricted in choice 
of land to what American pioneers had shunned, especially 
the heavily timbered tracts. 

By driving south from Milwaukee to Racine, then west on 
the plank road to Rochester, thence to Whitewater, Janesville, 



80 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

and down the Eock River valley, our traveler might have seen 
the very heart of Wisconsin's farming area as it was in 1850. 
Here was a region which socially promised to be a second 
western New York, whose cultivation already suggested that 
of the New England of sixty years earlier. With a long and 
heavy haul to market, farming had yet gone forward rapidly, 
and already millions of wheat was finding its way from these 
generous fields to the warehouses and docks along Lake 
Michigan. 

Our supposititious observer, as a valiant traveler, requiring 
rest and refreshment from time to time, would be sure to take 
special note of the taverns which stood at intervals of a few 
miles along all the main highways. Also, as a man of social 
intelligence, he would be interested in the country school- 
houses, which were even more numerous and more widely dis- 
tributed. The first would be, in almost all cases, good frame 
structures ; the last, save in the more advanced neighborhoods, 
would be inferior buildings either of round or of hewed logs." 
Our traveler would be sure to encounter, on all main roads, 
the "stages" that carried the mail to all the farming commu- 
nities, in addition to conveying passengers from place to 
place.^^ 

"J. H. A. Lacher, in Wis. Hist. Soc, Froc, 1914, gives an interesting 
account of early taverns and stages. In Piekard's report as state school super- 
intendent, for 1860, we find that at that time Wisconsin had 1405 log school- 
houses, doubtless all in the rural districts. There vrere 2297 frame houses, 177 
brick, and 166 stone. 

"For a good brief summary of the stage routes in 1848, see Louise Phelps 
Kellogg, ' ' The Story of Wisconsin, ' ' in Wis. Mag. of Eist., iii, 199fF. 



CHAPTER V 
WHEAT FARMING 

''In the rapidity of the rise and decline of the wheat indus- 
try, and in the extent of that decline, Wisconsin is unique 
among the states of the United States that have been impor- 
tant in wheat culture."^ This statement epitomizes the story 
we have to tell, more in detail, in the present chapter. 

When the new prairie settler of Wisconsin, in 1836, cracked 
his ox-whip and struck the breaking plow into the sod, prepar- 
atory to raising a crop of wheat, there was not being produced 
in the United States an amount of that great food cereal much 
in excess of the reasonable requirements of our own people. 
The population of the country in 1840 was, in round numbers, 
17,000,000. The total production of wheat the preceding year 
was 85,000,000 bushels, or an average of 5 bushels per capita. 
That is only a half -bushel per capita more than the average, 
for food and seed wheat, of the entire wheat eating population 
of the world in recent years, while it is considerably below 
the present average of consumption in both America and 
Great Britain.^ With an abundance of corn, which was the 
staple food of the slaves and made an important item also in 
that of a good proportion of the white population, a part of 
this wheat could be spared for export. However, practically 
the problem of the foreign market for wheat had not yet 
arisen in an acute form. 

Moreover, that problem was not destined to arise until after 
the new territory of Wisconsin had entered definitely and 
fully upon its career as a wheat producing area, for in the ten 
years following 1840 the increase in the home market outran 
the increase in the wheat supply. That is to say, the popula- 

^ John Giffin Thompson, The Bise and Decline of the Wheat Growing Industry 
in Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin Bulletins, Economics and Political Science 
Series, vol. v, no. 3, p. 13, 295-544. 

*Sir William Crookes, The Wheat Problem (New York, 1900), 9, 13. 



82 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

tion in 1850 was 23,000,000, an increase of 6,000,000, or 35 per 
cent, while the wheat production of 1849 was only 100,000,000, 
or an increase over 1839 of 17.6 per cent. 

We were, however, prepared to spare a goodly bulk of the 
annual crop for export as early as 1849;^ and ten years later, 
the crop having grown 73 per cent and the population only 30 
per cent, the foreign market had become a matter of crucial 
concern to American farmers. With the spread of wheat 
growing over the vast fertile stretches of the great plains dur- 
ing the years following the Civil War, America entered upon 
the production of an enormous annual surplus of wheat which 
has influenced the economic history of the world.^ 

The principal foreign market for American wheat, from the 
beginning of our period, was Great Britain.^ Fortunately for 
us, the demand in that country began to exceed the home sup- 
ply almost at the exact moment when the supply with us began 
greatly to exceed the home demand. Population in Great 
Britain, after the close of the Napoleonic wars, under the 
stimulus of manufacturing and commerce went forward with 
mighty strides. The additions, however, were mainly in the 
towns and in the manufacturing counties, while the rural popu- 
lation grew but slowly or not at all. By the census of 1831 
almost exactly two-thirds of the British population were living 
in towns, and the proportion thereafter tended to become more 
unfavorable to agriculture. In consequence the British farm- 
ers, who had customarily supplied the home demand for 
wheat, or nearly so, fell behind the requirements of the nation 
even with the stimulus of the ''corn laws," which prohibited 
importations except in times of scarcity. Then ensued the 
notable and tremendous campaign against the corn laws and 
finally, in 1846, their repeal. The industrial classes, demand- 
ing cheap food, had triumphed over the agricultural classes 

' The production of 1849 was considerably lower than that of 1848 and 1847. 

* See William Trimble, ' ' Historical Aspects of the Surplus Food Production, ' ' 
American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1918, 223-239. 

' Colonial America had shipped to Great Britain as well as to the Briitish, 
French, and Spanish West Indies. 



WHEAT FARMING 83 

demanding an assured market and a high price for wheat 

("com"). 

In addition to the disproportionate growth of the non-rural 
population, two other causes in Great Britain affected the 
home supply of wheat, in proportion to demand. These were 
the withdrawal of land from agriculture and an important, 
though gradual, change in the character of British agriculture. 
In the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 the total area of 
farm land taken into town limits and absorbed by railroads 
for rights of way, etc. amounted to nearly 700,000 acres. This 
was considerably in excess of the extent of new enclosures 
authorized during the same period, while the average value of 
the withdrawn lands, for cropping purposes, was naturally 
much higher than of that newly enclosed.^ During the period 
under discussion improvements in farming were numerous. 
Yet the agricultural classes were called upon to endure several 
sharp and general crises, and whenever a severe depression 
came it was observed that the grain growing districts suffered 
more than those sections where livestock was the dominant 
interest.^ Such practical demonstrations gave point to the 
exhortations for better farming, with more thorough cultiva- 
tion, fertilization of the soil, proper rotation of crops, feeding 
of livestock, and the like. The result was a more or less uni- 
form tendency away from the emphasis on wheat growing, 
which had become something of an obsession under the arti- 
ficial stimulation of the corn laws. More and more attention 
was centered upon the production of meat and wool. This 
tendency ultimately became so powerful that, between 1871 
and 1891, the area devoted to wheat culture declined from 
3,572,000 acres to 1,889,000 acres, or 47.1 per cent, while the 
acreage of hay increased 20.2 per cent and of pasture 30.7 per 
cent.^ Great Britain, therefore, as a predominantly industrial 
nation, which for industrial reasons adopted the free trade 

• Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Reports of Commissions, House of Com- 
mons, 1875, ii, 3. 

^W. H. R. Curtler, A Short History of English Agriculture (Oxford, Eng., 
1909), 285. 

* Sir William Crookes, op. dt., 122. 



84 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

policy, was the natural market for America's surplus wheat, 
and became, during the years when that surplus grew to im- 
mense proportions, the arbiter of prices to the American 
wheat farmer. 

At the time Wisconsin began to raise wheat as a business, 
the outstanding producers among the older states were Penn- 
sylvania, New York, Virginia, and Ohio. Of the 85,000,000 
bushels in the crop of 1840 (or 1839)^ these four states are 
credited with over 53,000,000. Maryland, Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, Indiana, and Illinois yielded 22,000,000 more, while the 
remaining 12,000,000 was distributed, in small amounts, among 
the other twenty-one states. The older states made shift to 
hold their own for some years, but there was little expansion 
save during the food crisis years of the Civil War, and mean- 
time the non-agricultural populations of these same states 
were increasing so rapidly as to provide in large part a home 
market for the wheat raised within their own borders. This 
left to the new western states the opportunity of providing a 
supply for the foreign trade, and the eagerness with which 
that opportunity was improved the story of Wisconsin wheat 
growing during half a century will show. 

The New York farmers, the Pennsylvania farmers, the Ohio 
farmers who came to Wisconsin in the early rush of settlement 
were by habit and tradition primarily wheat growers. The 
New Englanders had been partially weaned from the business, 
but, like the others, they had a lively appreciation of the ease 
with which wealth in the form of wheat could be extracted 
from the limestone soils of Wisconsin's prairies and openings. 
The problem was to get the soil under cultivation with the 
least practicable delay, and this, on the prairies at least, was 
accomplished with remarkable celerity. To illustrate, the 
farm lands of Mount Pleasant Town, Racine County, began 
to be claimed in 1836.^*^ In the season of 1837 some claim- 
holders (who had not yet bought their lands) harvested 1000 

• It is not quite clear whether the figures are for the one year or for the other. 
"Except a few pieces which were claimed the previous year. 



WHEAT FARMING 85 

to 2000 bushels of wheat.^^ In the summer of 1844 two young 
men, with ten yoke of oxen, and a couple of boys to drive, 
broke up in a few weeks 200 acres of Rock County prairie 
which they sowed to wheat. The next year they harvested their 
crop with a machine and secured 5000 bushels, a part of which 
was sold at Eacine at sixty- two and one-half cents per bushel.^ ^ 
These figures could be matched from other quarters, and they 
suggest that it was probably not uncommon for a farmer to 
break up and sow to wheat 25 to 50 acres during his first sea- 
son's operations. After that his fields expanded rapidly. The 
custom was to sow wheat year after year on the same ground, 
so that, in general, the increments of "new breaking" simply 
augmented the area sown to wheat, other crops like oats and 
potatoes occupying very minor portions of the arable, and 
hay being derived from the natural meadows or marshes. In 
case the land was openings instead of prairie — and many at 
first preferred this type, believing it to be better, especially 
for winter wheat — the timber was quickly chopped off to make 
rails for fencing. The ground, being soft and protected by a 
layer of humus, was easier to break than the prairie sod. The 
tree stumps interfered with the plow, but these either were 
left to rot away or were gradually grubbed out. Smaller 
trees, of which the openings had but few, and brush like the 
ubiquitous hazel were cleared away before starting the plow. 
Thus in a brief span, almost as if by some sort of magic, 
were the prairies and openings of southern Wisconsin trans- 
formed into fields of billowing wheat. The study of towns 
from the charts and plats reveals the dynamics of the proc- 
ess. ^^ As early as the census of 1850, the improved lands 
in the farms of Mount Pleasant amounted on the average to 
four times the acreage of the unimproved. That was an excep- 
tional case, for it appears that no other town at that census 
period showed as high a proportion of improved land. Yet, 

" Eacine Argus, Mar. 10, 1838. 
" U. S. 29th Cong. 1st Sess. Sen. Doc. 307, p. 138. 

" See agricultural charts of twenty-five towns, also Atlas, Farms and Farmers 
of 1860, in Domesday BooTc, Town Studies, I (in press). 



86 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

four of the eight towns in Racine County had half or more 
than half of their farm lands improved, the four together 
showing 30,205 acres improved to 28,541 unimproved. The 
other towns, lying farther from the lake shore, were less 
developed. For the county as a whole the figures are 63,338 
improved and 82,947 unimproved. For Kenosha, the other 
lake-shore prairie county, the totals are 50,987 and 79,862 
respectively. 

Surprising as it may seem, Eock County, whose farmers 
had a haul of 60 to 100 miles to the lake ports, already had 
in its made farms more improved land than unimproved. 
The figures are 143,235 and 137,111 respectively. The ex- 
planation is found in the extensive and beautiful prairie area 
bordered by and interspersed with timber, combined with 
easily cleared openings, which made that county so enticing 
to the early settlers ; and also, in its relatively small amounts 
of marsh land.^^ Seven other counties — Dane, Grant, Green, 
Lafayette, Milwaukee, Walworth, and Waukesha — each 
showed improvements in 1850 which exceeded a third of all 
lands included in their farms. All of these except Milwaukee 
had much prairie and openings.^ ^ Some of the counties, espe- 
cialty Grant, Dane, and Green, had within their boundaries 
considerable areas of rough hill land, but these were not yet 
largely occupied for farming purposes; so that in all cases, 
practically, we are dealing with farms which are in process of 
making on the prairies or in the smooth or rolling openings. 
These totals indicate how rapidly such lands were being 
brought into requisition for the growing of wheat, and the 
totals of the eighth census (1860) produce a still more striking 
impression. By that time the ten counties listed above had 

"If the marshes wMcli were mowed or pastured had been described as im- 
proved land, as tame grass meadows and pastures were, the unimproved in all 
of the southeastern counties would have shrunk appreciably. 

" Milwaukee 's unusual commercial advantages account for the rapid im- 
provement of her forested lands, which is an exceptional case. Comparison with 
Illinois is interesting. In 1850 the 57 Illinois counties show 11 which have a 
balance in favor of improved land; 47 others have less than one-half their farm 
lands improved ; 7 have one-third. In 1860, 41 of the 62 counties in Illinois had a 
majority of their farm lands improved. 



WHEAT FARMING 87 

a combined improved area totaling 1,693,491 as against an un- 
improved of 1,338,750. If we eliminate the counties of Dane, 
Grant, and Green, where many new farms were making on 
rough land much of which would never be cultivated, the totals 
for the other seven counties would be 1,060,587 and 675,590. 
That is, the improved land in those counties was to the unim- 
proved in the proportion of 10 to 6.7. This is a higher average 
of improved land than either Ohio or Pennsylvania, as a 
whole, had in 1850 in their farms. 

One wonders how a farmer in 1837 harvested a crop of 
wheat yielding 2000 bushels. This represented at the very 
least 50 acres and probably more. The harvesting implements 
were as yet the old cradle for cutting and the wooden rake for 
forming the sheaves. A strong man could cradle two to 
three acres per day, and a few celebrated cradlers of the 
pioneer time had records of four acres or even more. Per- 
haps two and one-half acres would be a rather high 
average. At that rate a field of 50 acres would supply 
full work for one man for twenty days. Four men, how- 
ever, could cut the crop in five days, and that period — or 
say a week — the farmer might ordinarily count on before the 
grain became too ripe to handle without waste. Allowing two 
binders to each cradler, the requisite harvest help would 
number at least twelve men. During the early years newly 
arrived American immigrants, who were looking for claims, 
were utilized for harvest labor, while later the immigrations 
from Europe supplemented the native supply. But often a 
scarcity of labor was experienced in given communities. The 
harvest was the harvest; on it depended the prosperity not 
alone of the farmer but of the merchant, the doctor, and every- 
body who had a stake in the community. So it is not surpris- 
ing that every able-bodied person, male and female, was at 
times requisitioned to help save the wheat crop. 

Wisconsin was settled precisely at the time when new in- 
ventions in harvesting machinery began to make their appear- 
ance after ages of dependence on implements little more com- 



88 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

plex than the sickle with which Ruth gleaned in the fields of 
Boaz. Cyrus McCormick patented his reaper in 1834. The 
McCormick Reaper Company began to manufacture machines 
at Chicago in 1846,^^ and by 1850 this and other reapers were 
generally used in the prairie fields of Wisconsin. George 
Esterly of Heart Prairie, Walworth County, invented a reaper 
which became very popular. The Civil War, which absorbed 
so large a proportion of the labor force,^^ made the use of 
reapers compulsory even on comparatively small farms.^* 

It is not usual to associate the idea of bonanza farming with 
Wisconsin. Yet we are given, in the newspapers, a harvesting 
scene of the year 1860 which suggests the Red River valley 
wheat industry of ten, twenty, and thirty years later. The 
DeForest farm in Dane County contained 2200 acres, of which 
1000 was in grain. The wheat acreage was 800, bearing a crop 
in that golden year estimated at 25,000 bushels. In harvest- 
ing his wheat Mr. DeForest employed eight reaping machines 
and sixty men.^^ The reapers were doubtless of the hand- 
raking variety, requiring two men to operate them. Five 
binders could keep up with a machine, and if four men were 
kept steadily at work *' shocking up," the sixty hands are 
accounted for. The self -raking reaper, the Marsh harvester, 

"Reuben G. Thwaites, "Cyrus Hall McCormick," in Wis. Hist. Soc, Proc, 
1908, 242ff; also, letter of Herbert A. Kellar, McCormick Library, Chicago, dated 
May 6, 1922. 

""Up to December 31, 1864, Wisconsin furnished 75,000 men for the federal 
service, and by the end of the war this number had increased to 91,379 men, or one 
man for every nine of the inhabitants of the state." Thompson, Wheat Growing, 
61-62. See Frederick Merk, Economic History of Wisconsin during the Civil War 
Decade (Madison, Wis., 1916), especially p. 52-56. 

" The McCormick Company maintained agencies in all counties. Their agents 
reported the conditions affecting sales and collections, nimiber of machines sold, 
facts about competition, etc. These are still in manuscript in the McCormick 
Agricultural Library, Chicago. A summary of sales of machines, taken from those 
sources, has been supplied by Herbert A. Kellar, librarian of the McCormick 
Library. This shows that the McCormick Company delivered to Wisconsin agents 
164 reapers in 1849, 96 in 1850, 60 in 1855, 292 in 1860, and 302 in 1861. Numer- 
ous other machines competed with the McCormick, among them the Esterly reaper, 
the Beloit reaper, the Manny reaper, and the Kirby reaper. Of the last named, 
about 200 were sold for the harvest of 1860 (see Wisconsin Farmer, xii, 389). In 
1861 the Agricultural Society declared that at least 3000 reapers of different 
makes had been sold in Wisconsin for the harvest of 1860 {Wis. Farmer, xiii, 94). 

" Milwaulcee Sentinel. Quoted in Manitowoc County Herald, Aug. 23, 1860. 




QO 
1— I 

H 
P 
O 



o 
o 
o 



WHEAT FARMING 89 

and especially the self-binder,^*^ invented by a Wisconsin man, 
John F. Appleby, progressively reduced the amount of labor 
incident to harvesting grain. 

Threshing with the flail was not done to any considerable 
extent in Wisconsin. Some of the early crops were threshed 
by the old Bible method of driving animals over the grain to 
tread out the wheat.-^ Some use was made, also, of a little 
f anning-mill-like thresher mounted on a wagon-bed, the power 
being supplied by the moving wagon wheels.^- This machine 
distributed the straw over the field and dropped the shelled 
grain in the wagon box. It was not very successful. How- 
ever, the invention and manufacture of threshing machinery 
came soon to be a Wisconsin specialty. A small, two-horse 
tread power machine was built and sold by J. I. Case in Ra- 
cine beginning in 1849. The next year a sweep power machine 
began to be manufactured also in Racine. Case unproved his 
thresher, bringing out several different models, and finally 
the Case machine, driven by a ten-horse sweep power, became 
the standard wheat thresher of the great wheat era, though 
other machines, like the Buffalo-Pitts and the old "Vibrator," 
similarly driven, were also widely used. The season of 
threshing, like the harvest, was a time of heavy labor, but it 
was relieved by being made also a social event. ''Changing 
works ' ' was practised universally, at least among the smaller 
farmers ; the household boarded the threshing crew and other 
hands, generally furnishing sumptuous meals with chicken, 
cakes, pies, and puddings for the gala occasion.^^ 

The marketing of the crop, while in some respects the most 
crucial of the processes connected with wheat growing, could 
usually be attended to with some deliberation, by the farmer 
aided by his regular help. It was not, in the same sense as 

^ Such a binder was invented by John F. Appleby of Wisconsin. His original 
"knotter" (see cut) is in the State Historical Museum. 

" Hence the ancient aphorism, quoted by St. Paul: "Muzzle not the ox when 
he treadeth out the grain." 

^ Such a machine was used at Whitewater in the early forties. Interview with 
Julius C. Birge. 

^ The classic description of a Wisconsin farm threshing scene is found in Ham- 
lin Garland's A Son of the Middle Border (New York, 1917), 50ff. 



90 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

harvesting and threshing, an emergency job. Nevertheless, 
during the early years it was a long, tedious, costly business 
to market a big crop of wheat. Forty bushels made a load 
weighing 2400 pounds. With a team of horses this might be 
hauled, at the rate of twenty to thirty miles per day, over the 
rough, rutty, dusty or muddy roads. The number of days 
consumed in marketing a load of wheat depended on the dis- 
tance from market and the condition of the roads. For the 
farmers in the more westerly counties it is easy to see that a 
week or even ten days would be required. Multiply the num- 
ber of days, whatever it was in a given case, by twenty-five, 
the number of loads in a crop measuring 1000 bushels, and see 
what becomes of the wheat farmer's fall and winter. The 
money expense, if the teamster had always to put up at the 
taverns which stood invitingly at distances of four or five 
miles along the main roads, in many cases would have exceeded 
the gross returns for a load of wheat. The farmers practised 
economy by taking some portion of the necessary supplies with 
them and camping out along the route. They also planned, as 
far as practicable, to secure return loads either for themselves 
or for others, which again reduced the cost. 

It must have required considerable courage to start off from 
Whitewater, Lima, Koshkonong, or Plymouth with a load of 
wheat when the price at Milwaukee was known to be 40, 50 or 
60 cents per bushel. In the first ten years of Wisconsin wheat 
growing the price never exceeded 90 cents, and frequently it 
was as low as 44 to 50 cents. Such persistent low prices, com- 
bined with a succession of bad crops in 1850 and 1853 (the 
pink-eye years), proved all but fatal to Wisconsin farming. 
These conditions are reflected in the emigration to California, 
which reached large proportions after 1849,^* in the universal 
complaint of **hard times," the equally universal mortgage 

" Two thousand persons of Wisconsin nativity were found in California in 
1860, and this was only a certain proportion of those who were from Wisconsin, 
most of whom, no doubt, were born in other states. California had 28,659 New 
Yorkers, and since there were more New Yorkers than native Badgers in Wisconsin 
in 1850, it is reasonable to assume that several thousand of them went to Cal- 
ifornia. 



WHEAT FARMING 91 

indebtedness among the farmers, the lack of credit, the extor- 
tionate interest rates. They are reflected likewise in the suc- 
cess of railroad financiers in persuading the farmers to mort- 
gage their farms in the hope of securing transportation facili- 
ties which would reduce freights and virtually add to the price 
of their products.^*^ 

A new epoch opened with the harvest of 1853, which was the 
first reasonably good crop since 1849. By that time the Mil- 
waukee and Mississippi Eailroad had built west to Rock River 
valley, so that the crop could be marketed at much less cost 
than formerly. The crop of 1854 was even better, while the 
market price now took such a sharp turn upward as to give 
the farmer once more the coveted 'dollar a bushel" for his 
wheat. The high prices continued for about five years, rail- 
road building meantime progressing in wholly unprecedented 
fashion. One line was completed to Prairie du Chien (1857), 
another to La Crosse (1858), and still another to Fond du Lac 
(1859). The air was full of other projects. During this same 
period southern Wisconsin experienced its most pronounced 
expansion of the wheat area. Many of the larger prairies, 
which men preferring the openings ventured into with some 
reluctance, were broken up during these years. The thinly 
wooded valleys of the Drif tless Area were cleared and turned 
to account with surprising rapidity. The sale of the school 
lands on especially easy terms stimulated the purchase both 
by settlers and by speculators of those lands.-^ Many of them 
— especially those belonging to the ''500,000 acres" — lay out- 
side of the limits of southern Wisconsin, and their sale stimu- 
lated the settlement of more northerly wheat lands. The 
enormous leap upward in production from 4,286,000 bushels 
in 1849 (which was more than twice the highest product for 
any previous year) to 9,000,000 in 1855 and 12,000,000 and 
14,000,000 respectively for the next two years tells a story of 

* Among the positive effects of the bad years was the agitation for better, more 
scientific farming. 

"See the author's paper, "Wisconsin's Farm Loan Law," in Wis. Hist. Soc, 
Proc, 1920. 



92 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

expansion which is fully borne out by the statistics of popula- 
tion increase in the wheat growing counties. 

There followed, in 1858 and 1859, two bad years, the latter 
marked by an unusually severe drought. Everything dried 
up. Not only was the grain crop negligible, but grass and hay 
were deficient; potatoes, roots, all were failures. The winter 
of 1859-60 was, however, mercifully mild, open, and terminated 
by an unprecedentedly early spring. There had been prac- 
tically no snow to relieve the drought, and when farmers began 
sowing wheat in March it was with but faint hope of a harvest. 
The sown grain, it is said, lay in the dust-dry soil for a month 
without sprouting. Then came the rains, steady, continuous, 
abundant, and the crop was made. It was such a crop as Wis- 
consin had not seen, even in the palmy days of the early 
pioneers. Many fields yielded 35, 40, even 45 bushels per 
acre. Hardly any gave meager returns. The average yield 
per acre for the entire state was 24.5 bushels, and the total 
amount which Wisconsin poured into the world's trade or held 
over to feed the armies of the Union in the years following was 
between twenty-seven and thirty million bushels. The price 
was not up to the mark of previous years, yet neither was it 
excessively low, standing around 80 cents at Milwaukee. 
Farmers, by the thousands, paid off their debts, and the state 
was enabled thereby the better to meet the shock of the Civil 
War, in which Wisconsin took so honorable a part. 

So much must be placed to the credit of the wheat crop of 
the *' golden year," as 1860 has been called. It seemed almost 
as if it had been providentially designed with reference to the 
need, in food and financial power, which the people were called 
to meet.-^ The evil effect of the wonder crop was to reenkindle 
the gambling spirit in the Wisconsin farmers. They were 
obliged, of course, to push wheat culture to the limit of their 

"The great crop, however, was explained on very simple scientific principles by 
Mr. J. W. Hoyt, editor of the Wisconsin Farmer. See vol. xiii, p. 34. He said 
the drought of" the previous year had subsoiled ' ' our abused and surface-exhausted 
land, ' ' making available for the young wheat plants some of the earth salts abso- 
lutely necessary to their successful growth, of which continual cropping had robbed 
the surface soil. These salts had come up into the surface layers under the influ- 
ence of capillation and had been held by the dry upper layer. 




Above. AN EARLY PATTERN OF TPIE ESTERLY 
HARVESTING MACHINE^ 1844 

Original in the McCormick Library, Chicago 




THE OLD CRADLE^ OR "CRADLE-SCYTHE" 

Original in the State Historical Museum 




JOHN r. Appleby's "knotter," which became the self-binder 

Original iu the State Historical Museum 



WHEAT FARMING 93 

resources during the continuance of the war. Patriotism de- 
manded that service. But after the war high prices combined 
with the hope of other bumper crops to maintain and expand 
the wheat acreage. Then not only rust, smut, and evil harvest 
weather — the ancient enemies of the wheat crop — ^but a new 
adversary, the chinch bug, entered the lists against the 
farmer, and all together rendered success in wheat culture far 
more doubtful than before. 

The general course of "evolution and devolution" through 
which the business of wheat growing passed in southern Wis- 
consin between 1840 and 1880 is illustrated on the local plane 
from our study of selected towns scattered through the older 
counties. Our chart for 1850 lists ten towns which were 
treated statistically in the census schedule of that year. In 
two of these the average production of wheat per farm for 
the year 1849 was about 370 bushels, in one other it was 340 
bushels, and in three others between 100 and 200 bushels. All 
of the high averages were in towns having prairie and open- 
ings, the low averages in wooded towns or those newly settled. 
An examination of the plats shows, by individual farms, the 
process of breaking up the land and raising wheat. It was 
going on through the census periods 1850, 1860, and 1870 in 
all of the towns. One Norwegian settler in Pleasant Springs, 
Dane County, who entered his land in 1844, produced, in 1849, 
300; in 1859, 600; in 1869, 2000 bushels, with 30, 75, and 200 
acres out of 200 under cultivation at the intervals noted. A 
crop of 1000 bushels was by 1859 common among the settlers 
of that town, and many produced more. There were crops of 
2000, 1700, 1500 in Bangor, La Crosse County, by 1859, though 
that settlement was less than ten years old. In Oshkosh Eli 
Stilson, in 1849, produced 900 bushels. He was then cultivat- 
ing 80 acres. At the next census he had 280 acres and har- 
vested 2300 bushels ; and in 1869, with 1040 acres under culti- 
vation, his wheat crop was 5000 bushels. A case from Mount 
Pleasant, Racine County, reverses the above. William G. 
Roberts produced, in 1849, 3500 bushels ; in 1859, 1700 ; and in 



94 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

1869, 300. Sugar Creek in Walworth, Empire in Fond du Lac, 
Lodi in Columbia, and Plymouth in Rock County all show 
generous individual crops. The charts show that in 1859 
Pleasant Springs (Dane County) had the highest average per 
farm, 452 bushels, with Bangor second, 436 bushels, and with 
Sugar Creek, Primrose, Lodi, and Empire each producing 
over 300 bushels per farm. Bangor lay in the Driftless Area, 
but the farms occupied the level floor and adjoining slopes of 
a fertile valley which was lightly wooded — practically level 
openings. The other leading towns were all in the glaciated 
area, with smooth, open lands and prairies. Bangor led all in 
1869, her farm average being 642 bushels. Pleasant Springs 
was second, with 586; while Empire, Lodi, Muscoda, New 
Glarus, and Primrose each had over 300 bushels to the farm. 
It may be significant that the last three towns were in the 
Driftless Area, the farms usually occupying the valley lands. 
Thus it appears the primacy in wheat culture was already 
passing from the glacial prairies of the southeast, and the 
change was completed ten years later. For in 1879 only one 
town, Bangor, produced 400 bushels per farm, the former sec- 
ond — Pleasant Springs — dropping to 124 and Lodi to 104. On 
the other hand. Empire in Fond du Lac County had 376 ; High- 
land in Iowa, in the Driftless (with a heavy Knox silt loam 
soil), was producing 250 bushels per farm; Pulaski, adjacent 
to Highland, 202; and Muscoda, another near neighbor, a bare 
200. The prairie towns had dropped to almost negligible 
figures, but Newton, in the forest of Manitowoc County, was 
coming to her own with 216, while Eagle had 183 and Castle 
Rock 187. 

It is obvious that, so far as southern Wisconsin was con- 
cerned, wheat growing was at its last gasp by 1879. The older 
counties had already generally abandoned it as the main crop, 
while in the newer settlements of the southwest, such as the 
dissected northern portions of Iowa and Grant counties, wheat 
was departing from the alluvial valley lands first broken up 
and was making its final stand on the ridges. The ridge 



WHEAT FARMING 95 

soils were a stiff clayey loam (the Knox silt) ; they were of 
pure limestone origin and portions of them had been left with 
their original covering of small timber until about that date. 
Then, in order to lengthen out the life of the wheat crop, 
farmers cleared the ridge lands and for a few years raised 
fair crops, especially by adopting a rotation in which clover, 
sometimes treated with gypsum, was an important element.^^ 

A study of the rank of counties in wheat specialization 
shows that Rock County stood first in 1849, fifth in 1859, and 
thirty-first in 1869. On the other hand, Green Lake, one of 
the newer counties bordering on Fox Eiver, was first in 1859, 
while St. Croix, on the northwestern lobe of the lower mag- 
nesian limestone, was the leader in 1869 and 1879. Buffalo 
County stood first in 1889 and again in 1899. By 1870 Racine, 
Kenosha, Walworth, and Rock counties, the great wheat coun- 
ties of the pioneer days, were down near the foot of the list; 
while St. Croix, Buffalo, and Trempealeau, in that order, 
headed the roll of counties.^^ In the rich virgin lands of 
northern Wisconsin, which by 1880 were settling up rapidly, 
wheat continued to be grown for some years. But the change 
to a different type of farming, in which the wheat crop should 
be only incidental, was well under way everywhere in the 
region we described as southern Wisconsin. 

No portion of the densely forested area attained distinction 
in wheat production. It proved impracticable, in the heavy 
woods, to clear land rapidly. The best crops of wheat could 
be grown on the newest land, while those lands which had 
been longest under cultivation were relatively better for other 
crops. Tillable land was not so plentiful at best as to encour- 
age gambling on a single crop, and from early times the ten- 
dency on such farms was to raise, in addition to wheat, a little 
of everything else. This policy prevented the forest settler 

** The author can recall when ridge land was first broken up on his father 's farm, 
about the year 1877. A German immigrant was employed, by the month, to 
grub out the young oaks and hickory trees. He could clear about five acres in 
a summer. The following May or June this would be broken up, four horses sup- 
plying the power. The process was continued till the "ridge field" occupied some 
thirty acres. This later became hay land and pasture. 

" John G. Thompson, Wheat Growing in Wisconsin, Table iii. Appendix. 



96 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

from sharing in the opportunity for making money quickly 
which the prairie farmer found in raising big fields of wheat. 
But he had his reward later in a less exhausted soil which 
enabled him the more readily to take advantage of the new 
agriculture. 

SOUKCES 

The most important single source for this chapter was John Giffin 
Thompson, Wheat Growing in Wisconsin. It is a capitally good study 
of the subject. 



CHAPTER VI 
DIVERSIFIED FARMING 

The period of thirty years between the seventh and tenth 
United States censuses, 1850 to 1880, witnessed not merely a 
great expansion in Wisconsin agriculture, but also a great 
readjustment in its fundamental character. In that interval, 
if we take the figures for 1849 and 1879, wheat production was 
multiplied 5.8 times— from 4,286,000 bushels in 1849 to 
24,888,000 in 1879. But the last figure was about 4,000,000 
bushels less than the crop of 1860. For some years both the 
acreage and the yield had varied widely and no such produc- 
tion record was destined to be obtained again. Wheat grow- 
ing was on the decline. 

On the other hand, corn and oats, which together amounted 
in 1849 to 5,403,670 bushels, rose in 1879 to 67,140,900 bushels 
— 12.4 times the former amount. This increase was steady 
and unbroken. The corn crops of the four census years 1849, 
1859, 1869, and 1879 were respectively 1,989,000, 7,517,000, 
15,034,000, and 34,230,578, or an increase of 7,000,000 bushels 
in the first ten years, 7,500,000 in the second, and 15,000,000 
in the third; while oats increased from 3,400,000 to 11,000,000, 
to 20,000,000, and to 32,000,000 bushels. 

During the same thirty-year interval the hay crop was mul- 
tiplied almost seven times — from 275,662 tons in 1849 to 
1,907,430 in 1879. That crop also had advanced regularly, by 
ten-year periods, even while the growing corn crop and the 
increasing use of corn stover or fodder were adding many 
thousands of tons yearly to the farm supply of roughage for 
stock. 

With the proportional increase in grain and hay used for 
stock feed went the steady rise in the production of livestock 
— cattle, pigs, and horses — also of butter and cheese and, 
for a time, of sheep and wool. In other words, what the 



98 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

census reveals is a change from the one-crop system of wheat 
raising to diversified farming. 

All of the products mentioned had been grown from the 
first, but so long as and wherever wheat remained the domi- 
nant interest they were merely incidental. Indian corn was 
usually the pioneer's first crop. After making his claim and 
building a cabin, he would break up a few acres of sod and 
plant his * ' sod corn. ' ' This he did by making ax-cuts in the 
overturned sod at regular intervals for the corn hills, dropping 
seed into the hills and stepping on them. The result not in- 
frequently was a fair crop of corn for *' roasting ears," for 
meal, and for grain to feed the oxen during the first winter. 
But, after the first season, when there was usually plenty of 
wheat for flour, corn was little used by settlers save in the 
form of '^johnnycakes" or for a breakfast cereal. Neither 
the Northeasterners nor the European immigrants were fond 
of corn substitutes for wheat bread. The Southerners used it 
more freely, but they were not numerous. Besides, the Wis- 
consin climate was long supposed to be poorly adapted to corn 
growing, the state lying north of the great corn belt. Killing 
frosts sometimes destroy the young plants after they have 
come up, and more frequently the unripe crop is caught by 
frost in fall and is left ' ' soft, ' ' in which condition it has little 
feeding value. As compared with the corn crope grown in 
Illinois, those of "Wisconsin were insignificant. Yet, experi- 
ence and science combined to improve the status of corn. 
Earlier maturing varieties were selected or bred, corn culture 
for this climate came to be better understood, the custom of 
cutting the standing corn and letting the grain ripen in the 
shock defended the crop somewhat against early fall frosts.* 
Gradually it came to be understood that corn was as sure as 
any crop which the farmer could raise. On the dry prairie 
lands of the southern counties, on the rich, well drained open- 
ings, and on the alluvial bottoms it was much surer than 
wheat, and the yield per acre was generally much higher than 

* The breeding of resistant corn has been one of the triumphs credited to the 
College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin. 




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AX EARLY SUBSTITUTE FOR WHEAT ON 
WISCONSIN FARMS 




SHEARING TIME ON A WALVrORTM COUNTY 
SHEEP FARM 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 99 

the wheat yield. Wet lands, particularly if the soil was heavy 
clay, were less favorable, as were the stump infested fields of 
the heavily wooded area, where hoe tillage had to be employed. 

The substitution of corn for wheat when the latter proved 
itself an uncertain crop was not immediate but gradual, as 
may be shown from our study of towns. For example. Mount 
Pleasant in 1849 produced on the average 375 bushels of wheat 
per farm, and only 102 bushels of corn; while in 1879 the same 
town was credited with 308 bushels of corn and 86 of wheat, 
thus reversing the relation of these two crops in thirty years. 
But, since the intervening two censuses show respectively 175 
bushels of wheat to 93 of corn, and 110 of wheat to 157 of corn, 
it becomes clear that the great change occurred in the last 
decade, between 1869 and 1879. Other towns give results to 
substantiate the conclusion that farmers did not go into corn 
raising wholeheartedly until wheat raising had become de- 
monstrably unprofitable, which, for southeastern and southern 
Wisconsin counties, was about 1870.^ 

The census of 1880 showed five outstanding corn producing 
counties — namely. Rock (2,555,704 bushels), Lafayette (2,- 
505,277 bushels). Green (2,187,550 bushels). Grant (3,408,034 
bushels), and Dane (2,983,250 bushels). A secondary list, of 
counties credited with more than 1,000,000 bushels, included 
Walworth, Iowa, Dodge, and Columbia. These were all large 
counties. The lake shore counties were all producers of small 
aggregate amounts of corn, though the two southern ones, 
Kenosha and Racine, which had much prairie land, and also 
Milwaukee, which had a high percentage of cultivated land by 
this time, produced their full quotas according to cultivated 

' Plymouth, in Eock County, shows 346 bushels wheat to 131 bushels corn in 
1849, 231 to 200 in 1859, 250 to 366 in 1869. In 1879 the figures were 46 bushels 
wheat and 813 corn. Disregarding the comparison with wheat, the production of 
which declined in all the towns by 1880, we find corn production increasing in 
Sugar Creek from 86 bushels in 1849 to 143 in 1859, to 459 in 1869, and 1065 in 
1879. In Empire the course of the corn crop is represented at the four census 
periods by the figures 36, 24, 60, and 131. Franklin had an average per farm of 
30 bushels, 60 bushels, 143 bushels, and 183 bushels. Whitewater figures run 51, 
124, 222, and 620; New Glarus, 22, 173, 69, and 408; Norway, 14, 164, 10, and 
230 bushels. 



100 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

areas.^ The northern counties, whether wooded or open, 
raised but little corn. Brown had only a few thousand bushels, 
Manitowoc still less, while Winnebago and Fond du Lac had 
each somewhat more than half a million bushels. Some of the 
counties which were low in corn were still growing consider- 
able wheat. That was true of Winnebago and Fond du Lac. 
The Mississippi counties, as far south as Vernon, were still 
raising wheat as their principal crop. 

The history of oat production, as represented by our se- 
lected towns, shows that the range of that cereal was wider 
than the range of corn production. It was grown to a con- 
siderable extent everywhere; neither longitude nor latitude 
affected the crop, and the yield seems to have depended solely 
upon the quality of the soil and the type of culture employed. 
Strong soils produced heavy crops, light soils light crops. In 
1879 Dane, the largest county, led in production of oats and 
was followed by Grant, Eock, Lafayette, Green, Iowa, Dodge, 
Fond du Lac, and Walworth in that order. Only Dane pro- 
duced more than 2,000,000 bushels. The others named all had 
above 1,000,000 bushels, and Sauk, Vernon, Waukesha, and 
Columbia produced over 800,000 bushels each ; while St. Croix, 
Racine, Manitowoc, Trempealeau, Sheboygan, Jefferson, and 
Kenosha exceeded 600,000 bushels. Considering relative 

• The best yields of corn among the counties named, in 1879, were obtained 
in Kenosha, 41% bushels to the acre, and in Walworth and Lafayette, 39+ bushels 
per acre. The lowest was in Columbia County, 32^/^ bushels. 

There was some shifting of positions among the counties in the thirty years 
from 1880 to 1910, yet on the whole the Wisconsin "corn belt" has remained 
fairly well outlined. Grant continued as the leader in 1890. In 1900 Dane, a 
county of larger area, took and held first place as to quantity of product, Grant 
being second but returning to first place in the recent census. In 1890 other 
counties, after Dane, were Kock, Lafayette, Green, Columbia, Iowa, Walworth, 
Jefferson, Dodge, and Sauk. In 1900 the succession was Dane, Grant, Rock, 
Walworth, Green, Columbia, Dodge, Iowa, Jefferson, Sauk, Fond du Lac, Eich- 
land, and Waukesha. In 1910 it was Dane, Grant, Eock, Columbia, Lafayette, 
Dodge, Green, Fond du Lac, Jefferson, Iowa, Sauk, Eacine, Outagamie, and Eich- 
land. The acreage in 1890 was 1,120,341; in 1900, 1,497,474; and in 1910, 
1,457,652; and the total production 34,024,216, 53,309,810, and 49,163,034 
respectively. Up to 1910 no lake shore county is credited with as much as 1,000.000 
bushels of corn, but 1,000,000 bushels for a small county like Eacine was a high 
production record. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 101 

areas, the three southernmost lake shore counties had the 
most generous oat crops and showed the best yields.^ 

In the growing of hay there were great differences among 
the towns compared, the average production per farm in 
1849 ranging from 7 tons in Brookfield to 21 tons in Norway 
(Racine County) ; in 1859 from 5 in Eagle and in Castle Rock, 
both new towns, to 24 in Norway ; in 1869 from 4 tons in Eagle 
and Castle Rock to 38 in Mount Pleasant; and in 1879 from 
7 in Eagle to 41 in Mount Pleasant. The prominent hay pro- 
ducing towns at the date of the tenth census, in addition to 
Mount Pleasant, were Whitewater, Primrose, and Pleasant 
Springs, Norway, New Glarus, Franklin, and Empire. The 
counties represented by the above towns are Racine, Wal- 
worth, Dane, Green, Milwaukee, and Pond du Lac. At that 
census period Dane County was credited with 108,470 tons. 
Dodge with 93,076, Fond du Lac with 85,240, Walworth with 
78,769, Rock with 76,205, Columbia with 71,991, JefPerson with 
71,774, Green with 67,252, Waukesha with 63,388, and Grant 
with 62,951. Winnebago, Racine, Lafayette, and Iowa each 
had more than 50,000 tons, and Sauk had practically that 
amount. 

The subjoined table shows the relation of the hay acreage 
to the acreages of oats, corn, and wheat in a list of 23 counties, 
and also the relation of wheat acreage^ to the combined acre- 
ages of these other crops. The proportion of wheat in the 
total crops varied from nine-sixteenths plus in the case of 
Dodge County to one-sixteenth minus in Lafayette. Five of 
the leading hay counties would also fall within a list of 15 
leading wheat counties. These are Dodge, Fond du Lac, Dane, 
Winnebago, and Columbia. On the other hand, the counties 
of Lafayette, Green, Grant, Iowa, Rock, Walworth, Kenosha, 
Milwaukee, and Racine are among the low counties in wheat. 

It is found that in 1880 Kenosha County had approximately 
17,000 neat cattle, Racine 18,500, Milwaukee 12,000, Walworth 
31,500, Rock 45,000, Green 45,000, Iowa 39,000, Grant 48,000, 

* The best yield in Kenosha County, 41% bushels as an average. 
^ Including rye and barley. 



i02 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



County 



Cul. 


Wheat 


Oats 


Com 


Hav 


Land 










232,406 


71,525 


24,334 


39,308 


49,620 


421,328 


89,911 


67,099 


86,897 


76,669 


436,689 


142,809 


28,202 


29,642 


64,918 


354,919 


112,201 


26,371 


21,416 


66,242 


409,377 


41,663 


60,443 


98,898 


46,297 


283,198 


11,774 


37,166 


59,745 


44,390 


256,677 


29,896 


37,670 


47,287 


35,104 


261,297 


34,594 


17,051 


27,089 


52,546 


176,415 


5,663 


14,654 


15,344 


37,886 


330,127 


9,167 


49,997 


63,926 


34,618 


200,477 


60,894« 


23,732 


668 


31,969 


109,199 


11,732 


11,573 


6,566 


26,533 


103,232 


30,083 


12,464 


2,940 


17,040 


191,125 


13,481 


18,016 


15,042 


43,344 


131,145 


21,162 


11,564 


25,480 


22,018 


382,194 


23,212' 


52,528 


74,835 


53,160 


222,642 


40,714 


26,863 


32,124 


36,160 


210,542 


45,407 


18,142 


8,813 


36,459 


178,759 


51,316 


24,810 


21,655 


26,753 


262,710 


26,080 


26,305 


40,332 


54,108 


189,707 


50,012 


15,361 


12,263 


27,324 


257,530 


42,638 


19,755 


23,333 


51,180 


213,533 


56,627 


14,957 


15,075 


48,143 



Market Ce- 
reals — 
Wheat, Rye, 

Barley — to 
Food Crops 

in Acreage 



Columbia . . . 

Dane 

Dodge 

Fond du Lac 

Grant 

Green 

Iowa 

Jefferson. . . . 
Kenosha. . . . 
Lafayette . . . 
Manitowoc. . 
Milwaukee . . 
Ozaukee . . . . 

Racine 

Richland 

Rock 

Sauk 

Sheboygan . . 

Vernon 

Walworth. . . 
Washington . 
Waukesha. . . 
Winnebago . . 



84-123 
115-230 
157-117 
124-113 
46-204 
12-141 
30-120 
48- 96 
56-670 
9-148 
70- 54 
21- 44 
37- 32 
13- 76 
21- 58 
23-180 
40- 95 
59- 63 
51- 72 
36-120 
62- 54 
57- 94 
56- 78 



Lafayette 40,000. Dane County, whose area is more than four 
times that of Eacine, had 59,000 ; Dodge, thrice the size of Ea- 
cine, 48,000; Columbia 33,000; Fond du Lac 38,000; Jefferson 
35,000; and Waukesha 25,000. 

It is clear that the cattle interest was pursued most inten- 
sively in the southeast, the south, and the southwest. The 
impression that animal husbandry had largely supplanted 
wheat growing in that area is deepened when we combine with 
the statistics of neat cattle those relating to horses, sheep, and 



•Manitowoc County also had 5396 acres of rye. Other rye producing counties 
in this list were: Columbia, 5656 acres; Dane, 5555; Grant, 4827; Jefferson, 4116; 
Milwaukee, 3468; Ozaukee, 2415; Rock, 8390; Sauk, 5264; Sheboygan, 4992; 
Washington, 4989; and Waukesha, 5344. In other cases the acreage is negligible. 

^Eock County had a crop of barley grown on 23,420 acres. Other counties in 
this list had areas of barley as follows: Columbia, 6547; Dane, 21,361; Dodge, 
15,049; Fond du Lac, 12,075; Jefferson, 9868; Manitowoc, 5290; Milwaukee, 7036; 
Ozaukee, 5262; Sheboygan, 9445; Walworth, 9679; Washington, 7448; Waukesha, 
10,209. Others have small areas. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 103 

swine. For example, Racine had 48,000 sheep, Dane 81,000; 
14,362 swine, Dane 96,000; 6684 horses, Dane 22,150. In 
sheep and horses Racine greatly exceeded her proportion, in 
swine she fell below. In sheep Walworth County was first in 
number, and also first in intensity, with Kenosha, Racine, and 
Waukesha following in her wake, and Fond du Lac a trifle fur- 
ther behind. Grant County had the largest absolute number 
of swine and Dane the second largest; but Lafayette and 
Iowa, together about the size of Dane, showed a higher in- 
tensity than either of these. In general, swine were plentiful 
in the corn counties and scarce in the wheat counties. 

To summarize: We find that, by 1880, the counties of the 
older Wisconsin may be divided into two groups. The first 
was that in which the growing of feeding crops — corn, oats, 
and hay, or any two of them — predominated very much over 
the market cereals — wheat, rye, and barley. The second was 
that in which the market cereals still occupied a larger area 
of the cultivated lands than the crops ordinarily raised for 
feeding livestock. Taking Dane County as our norm, we find 
there two acres of other crops to every acre of the market ce- 
reals. Jefferson County, lying on her eastern border, was on 
precisely the same basis, while Sauk, Grant, Richland, Craw- 
ford, Green, Lafayette, and Iowa, her neighbors on the south 
and west, had a much lower proportion of their lands in mar- 
ket cereals, and the same may be said of Rock, Walworth, 
Racine, and Kenosha counties. Milwaukee was in the same 
situation with Dane ; Waukesha was somewhat more favorable 
to the market cereals though her acreage of these was still far 
below that of the feeding crops. On the other hand, the coun- 
ties near the lake shore north of Milwaukee — Ozaukee, Wash- 
ington, Manitowoc — also Fond du Lac, Dodge, and Columbia 
farther west, were distinctly favorable to the market cereals, 
while Sheboygan and Winnebago leaned slightly to the other 
side. 

A line drawn from Lake Michigan along the north boundary 
of Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Jefferson counties, thence by 



104 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

the north boundary of Dane County to the Wisconsin, and in- 
cluding the counties of Sauk, Richland, and Crawford north 
of the river, would establish the northern limits of the dis- 
tinctively feed producing area in 1880. Finding as we do that 
livestock production in those counties harmonizes with the 
above conclusions, we are safe in describing this as the area 
in which diversified farming has made most progress.^ 

Both the systematic beginnings and the fundamental condi- 
tions of this new development are revealed in the story of the 
first successful state agricultural society. Various attempts 
to organize a state society on the model of New York and 
other eastern states had failed. Finally, in March, 1851, mem- 
bers of the legislature and other prominent citizens met in the 
capitol and effected an organization which immediately began 
to function and has proved permanent.^ 

In his first report the secretary of the society makes it clear 
that the state had no choice but to organize for the improve- 
ment of farming conditions, and to utilize the results gleaned 
elsewhere to promote better farming here. He says : "Organ- 
ized in a new state, with a sparse population, our farmers 
nearly all in moderate circumstances and of limited means, 
suffering under the failure of our staple crop for the past 
three years, and in a time of unexampled pecuniary disaster, 
and agricultural depression, we have no time to wait for a long 
preparatory training; and it becomes to us a matter of neces- 
sity, that this Society— Minerva like— shall at once step from 
birth to maturity. ' ' 

Acting under such convictions, the society raised funds by 
private means for holding a fair and cattle show, which oc- 
curred at Janesville in October. The society also encouraged 

•In the report of the first state fair, held at Janesville in October, 1851, it 
is stated that "none of the western counties had any specimens on the ground, 
and the northern counties but few." Counties strongly represented were Eock, 
Dane, Walworth, Eaeine, Kenosha, and Milwaukee; less strongly, Waukesha, Jef- 
ferson, and Dodge. Wis. State Agric. Soc, Trans., i, 16. 

•Erastus W. Drury of Fond du Lac was made president; Albert C. Ingham of 
Dane, secretary. Vice presidents were Eoswell C. Otis of Kenosha, Henry M. 
Billings of Iowa, and William F. Tompkins of Eock. See Wis. State Agric. Soc, 
Trans., i, 10, 95. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 105 

the organization of county societies, of which several modeled 
after the Berkshire County, Massachusetts, fair, founded in 
1810 by Elkanah Watson, already existed. The secretary was 
instructed to assemble material for a volume of transactions, 
in the expectation that it might be published at state expense. 

The principal part of this first volume, which appeared in 
January, 1852, consisted of a series of papers by local men, in 
the nature of surveys of agricultural conditions in the coun- 
ties. In that series all the counties of the older Wisconsin 
were reviewed, save Milwaukee and Calumet on the east and 
the lead counties in the southwest.^^ The tone of the writers 
was one of discouragement with wheat raising, but just as uni- 
formly they exhibited a reserve of optimism based on the 
hope that agriculture would now promptly change from the 
wheat basis to a more diversified type of industry. 

Their summarized testimony showed that only the smallest 
beginnings of general farming, crop rotation, and especially 
livestock production existed at that time in most of the coun- 
ties. Crops other than wheat were mainly corn and oats, but 
they were grown on a very small scale. Potatoes, stricken 
with the rot a few years earlier, were almost a complete fail- 
ure at that period ; and while other roots, like carrots, turnips, 
and rutabagas, could be produced with both ease and success, 
very few farmers took the trouble to raise them or had much 
occasion to use them for feeding. In some sections barley 
was grown for market, in others rye, but these crops merely 
tempered the effort to grow as much wheat as possible. 
Nearly all the hay that was gathered, at least in the counties 
away from the lake shore, came from the natural wild-grass 
meadows or marsh lands. In Kenosha and Eacine a move- 
ment was on foot to change the wild meadows into tame-grass 
meadows, and there was also some interest in the growing of 
clover and timothy on cultivated lands. Such experiments, 
however, were as yet sporadic. 

From nearly all counties came the complaint that local dairy 
products were insufficient to meet local demands, that much 

"In addition, there are papers on St. Croix, Crawford, and Sauk counties. 



106 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

cheese and butter had to be imported from other states and 
sold here at high prices. Reasons for the failure of farmers 
to give more attention to dairying were said to be a want of 
appreciation of its benefits, a lack of the means necessary to 
procure cows and equipment, and (among many of the foreign 
born) a want of knowledge of the processes of cheese and 
butter making. A more potent cause, however, as pointed out 
by a Dane County writer," was the universal habit farmers 
had of depending on the wild grasses for pasture feed. These 
were good for ten or twelve weeks in late spring and early 
summer, but when grazed down in the later summer no new 
growth would start in the fall, and such of the earlier growth 
as might be left was both unpalatable and unproductive of 
milk, while the pasture was permanently depleted by cattle 
during the dry season tearing out roots of the grass. In a 
word, the "flush season" was a very short one, and during the 
greater part of each year milch cows were a care, a nuisance, 
but not a source of profit. He was a far-sighted farmer indeed 
who deliberately planned, by sowing clover and other grass 
with his grain crops, to have good late summer and fall pas- 
turage for his cows, and yet that was the only method by which 
dairying could be made to pay. Only in Kenosha and Racine 
counties, and to a less extent in Milwaukee and Walworth, was 
dairying carried on under conditions guaranteeing success, 
and even there the number of experimenters was extremely 
small. Nearly every farmer had a few head of cattle, includ- 
ing cows, but as a rule they were a poor class of ''scrub" 
stock and they received wretched care. From many sources 
we learn that it was almost the universal practise to let cattle 
** rustle" for a living both summer and winter. At best their 
winter shelter was a straw-roofed shed and their feed the 
straw from the wheat crop and perhaps a little coarse slough 
hay. The pitiful spectacle of cattle humped and shivering 
around the farm yard in the coldest days and nights of Wis- 
consin's bitterest winters was so common as to be considered 

" John T. Smith. 




ELKANAH WATSOX 



Fouiuler of the Berkshire County Fair, 1810, and jironioter of New York 
state and county fairs 




JOHN WESLEY HOYT 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 107 

the rule. There were only occasional exceptions. Under these 
circumstances, little or no advantage was taken of the barn- 
yard fertilizer which might have been derived from the farm 
livestock. The work horses alone, when there were such, and 
the working oxen were regularly stabled and more or less 
regularly fed and cared for, and the manure from these was 
often a small part of what might have been available for crops 
if all livestock had been properly stabled and generously 
fed and bedded. 

Sheep were not yet numerous, but considerable interest was 
manifested in them and a number of good-sized flocks, some 
as large as 700 to 1000 head, were to be found in the south- 
eastern counties, particularly Kenosha, Racine, and Wal- 
worth. Most of the sheep, like the cattle and the pigs, were 
derived from stock brought in by drovers from southern Illi- 
nois and Indiana. Almost every farmer had a few pigs for a 
home supply of pork. A small amount of barreled pork was 
sold to the pinery and some was shipped from the lake ports; 
but the business of pork raising was in its infancy. The 
prairie counties were passing from the use of oxen for farm 
work to the use of horses. This general change, supposed to 
represent a fundamental economy — horses moving so much 
faster at their work — produced a rather widespread market 
for good farm horses, and some attention was given to their 
breeding. It was the southeastern counties which led in 
that line, as well as in sheep, in cattle, in tame grasses, in crop 
rotation, and in all efforts to underprop an agriculture made 
sick by the long continued cropping of the lands with wheat. 

Doubtless it was significant of the sentiment in that region 
that the first agricultural journal to be published in Wisconsin 
had its birth in Racine. This was the Wisconsin Farmer and 
Northwestern Cultivator, issued by Mark Miller in January, 
1849. Under various modifications of title, with numerous 
changes in editorial management and in character, this journal 
has persisted, though not continuously, to the present time. 
Its announced purpose was to assist farmers, through a modi- 



108 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

cum of "book knowledge," to understand the "capabilities 
and deficiencies of the soil, and how it may be improved — the 
proper rotation of crops — the right application ... of ma- 
nures," etc. The editor emphasized the necessity of livestock, 
the dairy, tame grasses, soil analyses, and soil treatment." 
He advocated deeper and more thorough cultivation, cheaper 
fencing (Dr. Hoy wrote some articles on a "living fence," 
which meant hedge fence), better stock shelters, more atten- 
tion to making salable butter and cheese, wool growing, and 
pork raising. He also urged the organization of county and 
state agricultural societies. 

In 1857 John Wesley Hoyt, an Ohio man of twenty-four 
years, who had been educated in medicine but had turned his 
chemical studies to account as a teacher of agriculture, came 
to Madison as assistant editor of the Wisconsin Farmer, which 
then and afterwards was published at the capital. Dr. Hoyt, 
in 1859, was elected secretary of the Wisconsin Agricultural 
Society, and early in 1860 he assumed in addition to his former 
duties the sole editorship of the Farmer. Hoyt's editorials, 
from his first appearance in Wisconsin, began to influence the 
thought of the people toward a more scientific view of agri- 
cultural problems. He also lectured extensively on scientific 
agriculture, covering, in, two or three years, most of the settled 
portions of the state, performing in this way a service anal- 
ogous to that performed by the later farmers' institutes. In 
1860 he proposed the name "farmers' institute" for a month's 
lecture course for farmers, which he offered to arrange if 
farmers desired it. The institute was not held, but at the 
time set for it Yale University held the first farmers' course 
given on a collegiate basis in America. Hoyt continued to 
edit the Farmer till 1867, and remained as secretary of the 
State Agricultural Society till 1872. He was a vital influence 
during fifteen years in developing a sentiment for better 
farming, for agricultural education, and for agricultural or- 
ganization. He died in 1912, at Washington, D. C. 

" He printed articles on soil analysis and other subjects, from the pen of the 
distinguished physician-scientist Dr. Philo R. Hoy of Eacine. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 109 

From the time of Dr. Hoyt's arrival, and even from the 
founding of the Farmer, the people of Wisconsin were never 
permitted to worship unmolested their golden idol wheat. 
Yet, as crops and prices improved together, beginning in 
1853, with railway transportation to add another increment 
of value to every bushel grown, it is not surprising that the 
movement for diversified farming for some years should have 
made but slow and halting progress. Several money making 
specialties were introduced which gained some currency. 
Chief among these were tobacco, hops, and sorghum. The 
first, begun at least as early as 1840, had a gradual develop- 
ment for some years and finally established itself as a regular 
feature of Wisconsin agriculture.^^ Hops had a meteoric ca- 
reer in this state as in some others, but about 1869 the drop 
in price to a point below the cost of production led to the 
plowing up of the hop yards in Sauk, Dane, Richland, and the 
other counties where the business had been most largely de- 
veloped, and the substitution therefor, at least in some cases, 
of a new type of dairying.^* 

The growing of sorghum was followed in a small way before 
the Civil War. During that crisis time the patriotic motive of 
affording the nation an independent supply of sugar called 
out extraordinary efforts, both in Wisconsin and in other 
states, to expand the area of the crop and to develop facilities 
for making sugar. ''Sorghum conventions" were held annu- 
ally; the agricultural press teemed with advice about sor- 
ghum culture, preparation of soil, high quality seed, planting, 
cultivating, harvesting, and the machinery required for sugar 
making. A goodly proportion of Wisconsin farmers experi- 
mented with it and the result had some influence upon the 
sugar supply. But with the close of the war, when access was 
gained once more to the cane-sugar growing areas of the 
South, the crop dwindled to insignificance. However, the 

" See Benjamin H. Hibbard, History of Agriculture in Bane County, Wiscon- 
sin (Madison, Wis., 1904), chap, iii, pt. 2. 

" Hibbard has an admirable summary of the hop business in chap, ii, pt. 2. 
See also Frederick Merk, Economic History, chap. i. 



no WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

knowledge of sorghum growing and syrup making persisted, 
so that during the recent war sorghum revived in a noticeable 
manner as an emergency crop. 

Among the features of the better-farming program preached 
by all farm journals, perhaps none prospered more during the 
later years of the wheat growing era than growing of tame 
grasses, especially clover. Farmers once habituated to the 
sight of the clover plant as a supplementary crop drilled in 
with the wheat seed and, after the removal of the grain, pas- 
tured and then either permitted to produce hay and seed or 
plowed under as a green manure, could not long blink its bene- 
fits, and it spread from farm to farm and from county to 
county. Also, the use of gj^sum as a stimulant to the growth 
of clover spread in like manner, and in many districts the cus- 
tom became general of ''seeding down" portions of the culti- 
vated land with clover and timothy either for pasture, for 
seed, or for hay in a rotation. This in itself was no slight 
benefit to agriculture. 

A shift from wheat raising to dairying always involved the 
use of considerable capital. When times were hard, capital 
for the purpose was wanting. On the other hand, pork raising 
could be entered upon with a very small initial outlay for 
breeding stock. Experience had demonstrated the success of 
corn as a crop in most portions of the older Wisconsin, and 
the habit of growing it to a small extent was almost universal. 
All that was needed, when wheat became doubtful or a proved 
failure, was to expand the area of corn and the area of clover 
pasture for pigs, to keep a few breeding animals, and to raise 
and fatten hogs. The markets could be easily reached by 
means of the new railways, and moreover, where swine were 
raised at a considerable distance from the railway they could 
be driven to the shipping point much more cheaply than wheat 
could be hauled to the same point.^^ 

" The ' ' prairie farmers ' ' in Grant and Iowa counties in the days before the 
completion of the Northwestern Eailway along the Military Eidge, used to drive 
their hogs 25, 30, or 40 miles to stations like Boscobel, Muscoda, and Avoca on 
the Prairie du Chien line. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING 111 

In these ways, although in the years 1850 to 1870 no startling 
revolution in favor of diversified agriculture can be observed, 
circumstances were forcing the change by little and little. 
Meantime, a widely read agricultural press was preaching the 
doctrine unremittingly, the state and county fairs were demon- 
strating its benefits to the multitudes, while every successful 
general farmer, sheep farmer, or dairyman was a means of 
spreading it through his own community first, and sometimes 
of exerting a wider influence. 

In this connection one ought not to ovei;look the steady con- 
demnation of bad farming methods involved in the patient, 
plodding devotion to the principles of good tillage exemplified 
by thousands of the emigrants from older countries where a 
more intensive type of agriculture had been compulsory. 
These people proved to the devotee of extensive farming that 
it often paid to employ fewer acres and to plow deeper, utilize 
all fertilizing material, and grow clover with the aid of 
gypsum. They were undaunted by the labor involved in 
grubbing, so they cleared out all stumps from their fields 
instead of cultivating round them. They generally cared well 
for such livestock as they kept and, in a word, were object 
lessons in better farming on several fundamental points incul- 
cated by tradition. When, however, it became a question of 
change to a type of farming better adapted to the time and 
region, leadership at first was provided mainly by American 
farmers. 

SOURCES 

The two main sources for this chapter are the Transactions of the 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, which began to be printed in 
1851, and the Wisconsin Farmer, whose publication was begun in 
1849. But Hibbard's admirable History of Agriculture in Dane 
County, Wisconsin, was also very useful, as were the Domesday Book 
Town Studies. 



CHAPTER Vll 

IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 

Diversified farming, in so far as it involved a new emphasis 
on animal husbandry, introduced our farmers to the never- 
ending discussion of livestock improvement — of breeding, as 
well as feeding. In this respect, as in the matter of wheat 
raising, the settlers coming to Wisconsin from the eastern 
states brought with them favorable traditions. 

The generation which came upon the stage after the close of 
the War of 1812 began the regular reading of agricultural 
periodicals, and these adopted improved livestock as a pri- 
mary feature of the better farming campaign. The same gen- 
eration began attending county fairs and state fairs. More- 
over, it was just at that time that importations of purebred 
animals from abroad began to influence strongly the efforts of 
breeders in America. The American line of purebred Devons 
is traced back to the Patterson importations of 1817 and the 
years following. Shorthorns that are eligible to herd book 
registry rarely if ever go back to importations earlier than 
those of 1818. In fact, it was in the years 1818 to 1840 that 
this country acquired from England the beginnings of those 
herds, of choicest strains, which made some of the breeders in 
New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kentucky, Ohio, and 
Illinois almost as celebrated for their shorthorns as were for- 
merly the Ceilings brothers, the Reverend Henry Berry, and 
Thomas Bates in England. There were earlier importations 
of animals of both the above breeds, but they attracted little 
popular interest; they failed to result in a persistent program 
of pure breeding or to exert a large influence toward improv- 
ing the livestock of the country or even of a single state.^ 

It was during the later years of the Napoleonic wars that 
Spain was compelled to give up her monopoly in merino sheep, 

* Among the cattle brought to the colonies were many Old Devons — the "red 
oxen" of New England; and there were probably some of the ancestors of the 
improved Durhams or shorthorns. 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 113 

and from the importations of Consul William Jarvis in 1809, 
1810, and 1811 the flock masters of Vermont and other states 
mainly supplied themselves with breeding stock. A few me- 
rinos had already reached the United States from France, 
particularly through the efforts of Chancellor Livingston, 
but the great movement for improving the wool industry 
dates from the Jarvis importation. Improved Leicesters, 
Cotswolds, Southdowns, and other English breeds followed 
rather than preceded the merinos. 

In the matter of swine, experimentation with improved 
breeds began to be common during the same general period. 
In this department, also, American breeders built on the 
achievements of the English, who had produced their improved 
Suffolk, Essex, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Berkshire breeds, 
all of which, together with the China pig and some others, were 
brought to this country and quickly gained popularity among 
the better farmers. 

The state and county fairs were peculiarly adapted to pro- 
mote a general interest in improved breeds of livestock. Grood 
cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, and poultry really made the fairs. 
In fact, the county fair was first suggested in Elkanah Wat- 
son's exhibition on the village green of Pittsfield, Massachu- 
setts, in 1807, of two merino sheep.^ Always and everywhere 
it was the livestock exhibits that attracted farmers to the 
fairs and gave them such success as they had from an agricul- 
tural point of view. 

When in the fall of 1851 the first Wisconsin state fair was 
held at Janesville, the State Agricultural Society made a spe- 
cial effort to secure a good showing of livestock, and they were 
reasonably successful so far as number of entries went. There 
were 52 entries of cattle, 68 of horses, 120 of sheep, and 20 of 
hogs. Among the cattle 12 are classed as shorthorns, 12 as 
Devons. The rest were ** natives and crosses." What the 
breeding of the shorthorns and Devons may have been we do 
not clearly know. We do know, however, that the exhibitors ' 

*See Elkanah Watson, History of the . . . Berkshire Agricultural Society, in 
Massachusetts (Albany, N. Y., 1819). 



114 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

names do not appear in the American Shorthorn Herd Book 
of nearest dates. Possibly not a single registered shorthorn 
or Devon animal was owned in Wisconsin at that time. Since, 
however, several exhibitors had family names which tally with 
those of contemporary shorthorn breeders in other states, it 
is not unlikely that the animals credited to them had been con- 
signed for the purpose of being exhibited and sold in Wiscon- 
sin. Some of the animals also may have been * 'full-bloods," 
so-called, though not eligible to registry.^ Six each of the 
shorthorns and Devons were exhibited by an Illinois breeder. 

The same query about purity of blood arises in relation to 
the exhibits of horses. No distinct breeds are mentioned. 
The animals are listed under three heads : horses, matched 
horses, and geldings. In only a single case, that of R. M. 
Wheeler's stallion " Hambletonian, " was the pedigree re- 
ferred to. In that instance a letter was placed in evi- 
dence from the Vermont breeder who sold the animal to Mr. 
Wheeler. He claimed to give the pedigree fully on the sire's 
side, incompletely on the side of the dam. This animal was 
evidently fairly well bred, but nothing can be asserted with 
confidence of the others. 

The sheep were grouped under six heads : long wool, mid- 
dle wool, merino, Saxon, paular merino, and crossbreeds. The 
long wools were all ' ' Bakewell sheep, ' ' which means improved 
Leieesters. Middle wools included Southdowns and Leices- 
ters. The merinos, Saxons, and paular merinos were probably 
purebreds. Mr. N. B. Clapp of Kenosha County certified that 
his breeding stock, Saxons, came from the importations of 
H. D. Groves of Hoosac, New York, and that he purchased 
them in the year 1844 in Dutchess County, New York and 
Litchfield, Connecticut. The paular merinos were brought 
from Vermont.^ Other merinos were probably of Vermont 
origin, nearly all of which belonged likewise in Kenosha 

'See S. p. Lathrop's statement in Wis. State Agrie. Soe., Trans., 1855, 26. 
There are no Wisconsin shorthorn breeders listed in Lewis F. Allen, The American 
nerd Book, i, published in 1846. 

* Wis. State Agrie. Soc, Trans., 1851, 14. 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 115 

County. Among the exhibits of swine one is called a Berk- 
shire, one a Byfield, one a Leicester, and a fourth a Neapoli- 
tan. In other cases the breed is not designated and nothing 
is said about purity of blood. 

Considering the exhibition as a whole, there is no doubt that 
in the interest of Wisconsin farmers sheep held at that time 
highest place among improved livestock, while swine held the 
lowest place. Cattle and horses were merely of that degree of 
respectability which argues a rather languid interest in their 
improvement. The exhibits of shorthorns by Wisconsin men 
all came from Racine and Walworth counties, save one which 
was from Rock; while the Devons with one exception were 
from a single herd at Fox Lake, in Dodge County. Of course, 
in those pre-railway times distance and conditions of travel 
influenced very markedly the geography of the exhibits. 

It is not to be inferred, from what has been said, that there 
were probably no good cattle in the state at that time. Indeed, 
evidence independent of the Transactions proves the existence 
from early times of improved cattle, particularly in Racine, 
Kenosha, and Walworth counties. But circumstances had hin- 
dered those who tried to improve their stock. Generally 
speaking, cattle grazed, as commons, the untilled lands in 
nearly every neighborhood. The herds mingled together in- 
discriminately, thus preventing careful, determinate breeding 
from selected sires. This evil continued till practically all 
the lands were taken up and enclosed, after which the herds 
were effectually separated.^ Since the prairies and openings 
of the southeastern part of the state were earliest brought 
into farms and enclosed, it was there that progress in livestock 
improvement first became practicable. 

Passing over the intervening years until we reach the ex- 
hibits of 1860, we find 22 shorthorns receiving awards and 
several others ''honorable mention." The most prominent 
exhibitors were Richard Richards and John P. Roe of Racine 

'It was many years before public opinion demanded and enforced a law 
which forbade owners to allow bulls to run at large. See Wisconsin, Laws of 1870, 
chap. 93. 



116 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

County, Seymour Brooks of East Troy, Walworth County, 
and C. H. Williams of Excelsior, Sauk County. All of these 
men were at that time recognized breeders of registered stock. 
According to the Herd Book of 1859, Eichards was owner of 

4 pedigreed bulls and 6 cows. Roe had 3 pedigreed bulls and 

5 cows ; while Brooks had, in 1859, 1 bull and 1 cow*^ and Will- 
iams 1 bull and 5 cows.' None of the other exhibitors of 1860 
are named in the Herd Book, though several other Wisconsin 
breeders appear in it. By that time we can claim for Wis- 
consin a definite status in the breeding of purebred short- 
horns, and we find equally good evidence to prove the interest 
in Devons. There were also, among the cattle, a few Alder- 
neys, Ayrshires, and Herefords. 

After 1860 the breeders of shorthorn cattle increased very 
rapidly in numbers and also became widely distributed over 
the state. It is not possible, in this brief sketch, to notice 
many individuals. Racine County continued to hold a very 
prominent position. Richard Richards, who was in 1859 one 
of the best known Wisconsin shorthorn breeders, increased his 
herd gradually until by 1866 it counted 24 head of registered 
stock. But he dropped out of that department shortly after 
1870, devoting his energies and great ability to the breeding 
of fine horses and fine pigs. Mr. George Murray of Racine 
was owner of a group of shorthorns which, under the name 
of the Slausondale Herd, was famed not merely in Wisconsin 
but all over the country as one of the choicest herds in Amer- 

• Mr. Brooks, who was the son of a successful New York breeder, had a dis- 
persal sale in June, 1857, and presumably sold most of his herd of 25 mature 
shorthorns and 20 calves. See Wis. Farmer, 1857, 213-214, 223. His herd was 
described by the editor of the Farmer as ' ' undoubtedly the largest and best bred 
herd in the state. ' ' He adds : "If scattered through the different counties and 
used judiciously, it will tend to materially improve our stock. ' ' It must be noted 
that though the Herd Book of 1857 fails to credit Seymour Brooks vdth any reg- 
istered animals, his bull "Samson," No. 2172, winner of the first prize at the 
«tate fair at Milwaukee in 1856 and at Janesville in 1857, is credited to William 
Ellsworth of Mayfield, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. This is an instance to show how 
fllowly the records adjusted themselves to changes of ownership and it suggests that 
Brooks's entire herd were probably Herd Boole animals. 

^C. H. Williams, according to the Herd Boole of 1857, was owner of 9 
registered shorthorns. In 1858, at the state fair held at Madison, his Kentucky 
■ibred bull "Paris," No. 1995 (see cut) took first premium in the shorthorn class. 




PARIS — DURHA:M^ owned by C. H. WILLIAMS;, EXCELSIOR; SAUK COUNTY 
First ]irize at state fair, 1858 




BLOOMFIELD 3d — DEVON; OWNED BY THOMAS REYNOLDS; MADISON 
First prize at state fair, 1858 




PRIZE WINNING SPANISH MERINOS 
Bred and owned by Charles M. Clark, Whitewater, about 1878 




ELOOD HORSE — KING OF CYilRY 
Prom state Agriciiltiiral Society Transactions, 1854-57 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 1 1 7 

ica. In April, 1873, Mr. Murray held a public auction at his 
farm in Mount Pleasant, when visiting buyers were said to 
have numbered above 400 from both the United States and 
Canada. At that sale 21 cows and heifers brought the sum of 
$18,640, or an average of $887; while 9 bulls were sold for 
$5565, or an average of $619. This was one of the most suc- 
cessful sales held in America in that period.'^ Mr. Murray 
bought choice animals in Canada, in Kentucky, and indeed 
wherever he could find individuals of the types and the breed- 
ing calculated to improve his herd. Throughout the decade 
of the seventies his stables and pastures just outside the city 
limits of Racine were a mecca for shorthorn breeders and 
fanciers, though his stock was rather too high priced to be 
available to the ordinary farmer. 

Most of the prize winning horses exhibited at the Wisconsin 
state fair up to the Civil War were Morgans and Blackhawks. 
The latter were simply one strain derived by a process of care- 
ful breeding (with "blood-horse" stock) from the original 
* * Justin Morgan, ' ' progenitor of the Morgan line. There were 
a few entries of blood horses, as the English thoroughbreds 
were called in the Transactions, but only a few. R. M. Wheel- 
er 's * * Hambletonian, " referred to above, was brought from 
Vermont in 1850. He traced back through the English 
''Eclipse" to Barley's ''Arabian," 1700. On the side of the 
dam, however, his breeding was in doubt. Another blood 
horse, "King of Cymry," was imported into Wisconsin in 
1854 by Captain McKinnon of the British navy and kept at 
Menasha. In his veins was some of the best blood represented 
on the English turf, and the claim was made, perhaps with 
justice, that he was the ^^ first English thoroughbred horse ever 
imported into the state. "^ The problem of pedigrees in the 
case of horses entered as blood horses was so serious that 
as late as 1858 the committee of judges ruled out the only two 

* See Eacine Journal, Apr. 16, 1873. Charles M. Clark of Whitewater, who was 
a rival shorthorn breeder, told the writer that at a later time he saw Murray sell 
at a Chicago sale his famous old cow "Duchess of Thorndale" with two of her 
heifers and one bull for more than $20,0001 The heifers each brought $8000. 

• Statement of George O. Tiffany, Wis. State Agric. Soc, Trans., 1854-57, 512. 



118 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

exhibits in that class because their pedigrees were unsatis- 
factory. 

On the other hand, as early as 1852 T. J. Wood of Baraboo 
exhibited ** Vermont Morgan," represented to have been of 
pure Morgan breeding in the Gifford Morgan and Sherman 
Morgan lines. Another Morgan sire, ' ' General Gifford, ' ' was 
brought from Vermont about 1854 by John M. Clark of White- 
water. That horse was winner of the first prize at the state 
fair in 1857, where he competed with two Morgan stallions and 
seven Blackhawks. In 1858 there were again exhibited two 
Morgan stallions, one owned in Fond du Lac County, the other 
in Milwaukee. Both were approved as to pedigree. That 
year there was a notable showing of Blackhawks, ''some of 
them splendid specimens of that stock — probably equal to any 
that have ever been produced. "^^ Among the prize winners 
were stallions from Waukesha, Dodge, Eacine, and Milwau- 
kee counties. 

The Morgan (and allied Blackhawk) blood became so widely 
diffused through southern Wisconsin that, during the Civil 
War, the cavalry regiments from this state employed as 
mounts to some extent the medium sized, but strong, spirited, 
wiry, and fleet footed chargers descended from that famous 
Green Mountain stock. ^ - 

In the years following the war occurred a remarkable de- 
velopment in horse breeding for the turf and for pleasure 
driving. The American thoroughbred, especially the horse 
of Kentucky breeding, was the favorite for these purposes. 
Interest was keen in every portion of the state, stimulated no 
doubt by the fairs and driving associations;^- in the actual 
business of producing fine horses, however, Racine County 
was easily the leader. Men from that county visited the cele- 

"Eeport of the Committee on Blood Horses, official. By Andrew Proudfit, 
chairman. Wis. Farmer, 1856, 546-549. An admirable, informative report. 

" Ex-Governor Hoard told of his escape from rebel troopers through the fleet- 
ness and endurance of his Morgan mount. 

" The first law authorizing the ' ' incorporation of associations for improving 
the breed of horses" was published April 1, 1859. 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 119 

brated studs of Kentucky and brought back promising colts.^^ 
Richard Eichards, Murray and Kelley, J. I. Case, A. P. 
Dickey, Stephen Bull, William L. Utley, Gilbert Adams, and 
others entered the lists as breeders of thoroughbreds, and 
soon it was said, probably with truth, that Racine County 
had more standard bred horses than all the rest of the state 
taken together. 

The Racine breeders sold many animals for shipment into 
the western states. Customers came from Minnesota, Dakota, 
Nebraska, and Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, Wyoming, and Mon- 
tana, occasionally from the Pacific states also. For example, 
in 1871 A. P. Dickey shipped 17 head of horses to Denver, 
Colorado, among them the stallion ''Red Cloud," which was 
sold for $3000.^* Richards owned ''Bellfounder" as early as 
1866. He secured the more noted sire ''Swigert" (see por- 
trait, p. 125) apparently in 1869 from the Alexander farm in 
Kentucky.^ ^ Within a few years he was shipping Go\ti= to 
most of the states named.^® After awhile J. I. Case, the man- 
ufacturer, who was a great horse fancier, had perhaps the 
largest, most valuable stud in the state. There were, how- 
ever, as might be expected, prominent breeders in other 
counties. For example, Mr. Richard Pheil of Milwaukee de- 
veloped about 1865 a fine stud which included ''Escape," 
"Bill Tenney," "Crichton," and "Riga," also a number of 
thoroughbred mares. Other Milwaukee men owned excellent 
individual horses, as did men in other cities, so that by 1880 
or thereabouts it had become comparatively easy for farmers 
in almost every part of southern Wisconsin to gain access to 
thoroughbreds for breeding purposes. 

It must be said, however, that no very general movement 
to build up the equine stock of Wisconsin farms by crossing 

" See Bacine Journal, July 26, 1871, for an account of Dr. Champlin (veteri- 
nary surgeon) paying a visit to the Alexander farm and returning with "three 
blooded colts." 

" Racine Journal, Feb. 28, 1871. 

" Western Farmer, 1869, 116. 

"As shown by his account book (MS.), in possession of Mrs. Laura Bichards, 
Madison, Wis. 



120 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

common animals with thoroughbreds ever took place, frequent 
as such crosses were in given localities.^ '^ The common horses 
of Wisconsin, derived from various sources — Canada, Penn- 
sylvania, New York, and the prairies of the West — were pre- 
vailingly of very moderate size and weight. A farm team 
weighing 1200 pounds apiece was the exception rather than 
the rule. They ranged from 900 to 1300, the average probably 
being around 1100. It was because of the light weight of the 
horses that oxen continued to be used for the heavy, slow 
work of clearing and breaking. And even with the lands 
mostly under cultivation, farmers recognized the desirability 
of having horses of greater weight and strength than the com- 
mon stock for the regular farm work. Since heavy horses also 
found a readier market, at good prices, than any other type 
save extra fine matched carriage teams, an added impulse 
was given to breeding for size and weight, for which purpose 
the thoroughbreds were not particularly beneficial. 

When breeders began seriously to study the farmer demand, 
they met it by importing purebred animals of the heavy draft 
breeds, especially Normans or Percherons, and Clydesdales, 
afterwards adding also Belgians and English shires. The 
response was immediate. Activity in importing and breeding 
draft horses grew apace, and it spread over the state much 
more generally and more quickly than did the breeding of 
thoroughbreds. The counties of Eock, Columbia, Sauk, Dane, 
Dodge, Waukesha, and Milwaukee, aside from the southeast- 
ern counties, competed for recognition at the fairs. In 1880, 
for the first time, the State Agricultural Society offered prizes 
for draft horses under two classifications: (1) Norman; (2) 
Clydesdale and others. The winning Normans came from 
Janesville, Dayton, Stoughton, Okee, Ableman, and Mazo- 
manie; the winning Clydesdales (and others) from Madison 
and Brooklyn in Dane County, and from Illinois. 

To show that Eacine was not inadaptable, we find George 
Murray and Eichard Eichards, erstwhile breeders of thor- 

"Like Eaeine County, where farm auction offerings of livestock were apt to 
specify colts sired by some great trotter like Swigert. 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 121 

oughbreds, carrying away prizes on their Clydesdales, the 
former in 1875 taking not only general prizes but also the 
** breeder's special premium" for the best draft stallion of 
any breed and the second best mare of any breed, also sweep- 
stakes on horses for best stallion and five of his colts, and best 
mare with foal by her side. A son of Richard Richards, Grif- 
fith Richards, residing at Cambria, Columbia County, also 
captured prizes with his Clydesdales. 

Within twenty years after 1880 the farm stock of horses 
had become profoundly and almost universally modified as a 
result of the multiplication of draft breed sires and their 
general distribution over the state. Nearly every farm had 
its *'big team" or teams for the heavy farm work and for 
heavy hauling. Horses weighing 1400 pounds became as 
common as those of 1200 had been earlier. Driving horses, 
which continued to be useful for a time and somewhat divided 
the interest with draft horses, have declined in importance 
since the coming of the automobile. 

A question has arisen whether addition of weight has not 
actually gone so far as to be uneconomical, particularly since 
the advent of the tractor, which affords relief from the heav- 
iest farm draying. For some years a movement has been 
in progress looking toward a different type in the breeding 
of farm horses. It is now maintained, by some experts, that 
crosses between the large farm mares, compounded mainly 
of draft horse blood and the common stock, and purebred 
Morgan sires will produce the ideal farm horse. Many such 
are already to be found — fine, well knit, clean limbed, warm 
blooded animals weighing 1200 to 1400 pounds, fit for the 
plow, the dray, the self-binder, and all other farm work, and 
not ill adapted to the saddle or the road harness.^^ 

While breeders very properly place the emphasis on pure- 
bred animals as the surest means of improving the quality of 
cattle, horses, and other livestock, it should be noted that very 

" It may well be that, the problem of size being solved through the persistent 
use of draft sires, ' ' blood horses ' ' hereafter may be much more sought after than 
formerly for farm breeding purposes. 



122 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

real improvement resulted also from the use of grades and 
crossbreeds. For a good many years the average Wisconsin 
farmer was loath to incur the expense involved in the use of 
high priced breeding animals. A purebred shorthorn calf 
might cost from $50 to $200 ; a grade calf would cost, say, $10. 
The temptation, accordingly, was overpowering to take the 
cheaper. This made farm breeding an uncertain process, 
with benefits far below those attending the general use of 
purebred males; but the net result was a decided improve- 
ment over the old-time "scrub" stock. Historically, it was 
very largely, even mainly, by the employment of such grades 
that the first general improvement of farm cattle came about, 
and the same statement will cover the case of farm horses, 
though when we come to the smaller and less expensive farm 
animals — pigs and sheep — we find a more general tendency 
to employ purebreds.*^ 

Wool production in Wisconsin up to about 1870 followed 
closely the course of that business in the country as a whole. 
Wool growing for household industrial uses had been common 
from early colonial times, but wool growing as a commercial 
enterprise developed in the United States between the years 
1808 and 1830.^" The influence bringing about the change 
was the development, partly through war and embargo, partly 
through the protection of infant manufactures, of the woolen 
industry as carried on by the factory system. Coincident with 
the beginning of the American factory production of woolens 
came the importations of merinos from Spain, begun by Con- 
sul William Jarvis, which totaled in about thirty months 
nearly 20,000 head. For a few years, under the stimulus of 
high prices for fine grades of wool, the country went mad over 

"Anyone who ■ was familiar with the farm stock of horses of forty or fifty 
years ago can recall individuals that were specially agreeable to ride or drive, 
others that were famous emergency "pullers," still others that could carry the 
plow at a good clip twelve hours per day. By tracing their descent through 
sires advertised as " half -Canadian, " "part Blackhawk, " or "three-quarter 
blood Morgan," such characteristics are often explainable. 

*" See L. G. Connor, * * A Brief History of the Sheep Industry in the United 
States," Amer. Hist. Assoc, Annual Report, 1918. This is an invaluable survey 
of the field and is my chief reliance for the general facts referred to under this 
topic 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 123 

merinos. Fabulous prices were paid for breeding stock- 
Flocks of purebreds became especially numerous in Vermont, 
the home state of Mr. Jarvis, but many were started in other 
states also.-^ Then a period of manufacturing depression, due 
in part to English competition in woolens, forced down the 
value of sheep and resulted in sending many thousands of 
common and grade merino animals into the West, the states 
of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois gaining largely 
therefrom. This created the sources from which the supply 
of common sheep in the forties and fifties reached Wisconsin. 

In 1837, when Wisconsin began to settle up from the East, 
there were in the United States, it is estimated, 18,000,000 
sheep, of which the three states New York, Vermont, and 
Pennsylvania had one-half. The factory demand having risen 
steadily for some years, the finest wool was then bringing up 
to 72 cents per pound and wool growing, naturally, was re- 
garded as a most profitable branch of farming. This con- 
tinued to be the case for about ten years and explains why it 
was that Wisconsin farmers, the moment wheat crops began 
to deteriorate, turned their attention to wool growing. It ex- 
plains why for some years the interest in good sheep was so 
much keener and more general than the interest in better 
cattle, horses, or pigs. 

Means of transportation from many parts of the West 
being almost non-existent, the market for wool in those sec- 
tions was correspondingly poor and the prices of sheep low. 
That is why so many flocks, numbering thousands, were driven 
north from Illinois and Indiana to be sold to Wisconsin farm- 
ers at prices which made their purchase a strong temptation, 
especially since wool could be shipped cheaply from the lake 
ports via the Erie Canal to the eastern market. Under these 
conditions, wool growing began in Wisconsin a few years 
after the first settlements were made. It is said in 1845 there 

"Not infrequently as much as $1000 was paid for a ram. The furore became 
BO great that, it is said, a good mother in Pennsylvania called her tenth son 
"Merino," as fathers in 1856 named male children " Fremont " and in 1860 
"Lincoln," 



124 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

were not over 30,000 head of sheep in the territory, yet in 
1850 the census taker found 125,000 head.^^ 

We have already noted the prominence given to sheep at 
the first state fair in 1851. The merinos, paular merinos, and 
Saxons, exhibited from Kenosha County and from Fond du 
Lac, were a pledge of the effort at improvement of the stock 
of sheep which had already begun, purebreds being brought 
from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. It was only a 
few years until Wisconsin breeders were prepared to supply 
breeding stock of both sexes and all ages to their fellow 
farmers. The records of state fairs prior to 1860 testify to 
the existence of purebred merinos in Kenosha, Waukesha, 
Fond du Lac, Walworth, Milwaukee, and Dodge counties. 
Doubtless there were flocks in other counties as well. Long 
wools were exhibited mainly from Dane County. 

The county of Walworth became the leading county in the 
production of fine wool sheep, and in that county the town of 
Whitewater was the most noticeable competitor at the state 
fairs, her breeders usually numbering four or five.^^ In 1850 
Whitewater had 3282 sheep, more than those in any other of 
10 towns. In 1860 the number was 2734, which again was the 
largest number assigned by the census to any one of 22 towns. 
In 1870 the number had risen to 6030. Whitewater's nearest 
competitor that year was Sugar Creek, in the same county, 
where the number of sheep was 5449, while in Mount Pleasant, 
Racine County, it was 5432. 

From the census returns of wool and of sheep one can com- 
pute, roughly, the average yield per head, and this enables us 
to determine where the improved sheep were to be found at the 
census dates. In 1870 Whitewater sheep clipped, on the 
average, nearly 6 pounds, and Mount Pleasant sheep about 
the same. In Brookfield, Waukesha County, the average was 
4.7, in Bangor less than 3, in Castle Rock 2 pounds. Empire 

** The importations became even more numerous in the next decade. In 1854 
it was said (see Wis. Farmer, 1854, 227) of sheep: "They have been brought 
into this state this season by thousands." 

" Included as from Whitewater, however, were men living in the adjacent town 
of Lima, which is in Rock County. 




YOUNG FREMONT — PliENCH SIERINO 

Bred and owned by Giles Kinney, Whitewater. First shorn 

at two years of age. Weight of fleece, well washed, 

34 pounds. From State Agricultural 

Society Transactions, 1859 




PRIZE WINNING NEW YORK SUFFOLK PIGS 
From Wisconsin Farmer, 1858 




RICHARD RICHARDS 




TIIOROUGIICRED HORSE — SWIGERT 
After an oil painting in possession of Mrs. Laura Eichards, Madison 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 125 

in Fond du Lac County sheared nearly 5, Franklin less than 
2, New Glarus nearly 4, Newton 3+, Norway 2.3,^^ Orion 3, 
Pleasant Springs 3.2, Plymouth 4.7, Prairie du Chien 2+, 
Primrose 3+, Pulaski 3+, Sparta 4+. This comparison 
places in one category towns representing Walworth, Racine, 
Waukesha, Fond du Lac, Green, Rock, and Monroe counties, 
and suggests that the improvement of sheep, doubtless 
through the use of purebred merinos, had become very general 
in those communities. We know from other sources that this 
was true. Such general improvement had likewise taken place 
in some counties for which we have no representative towns 
in our list, for example Kenosha. A writer in the Racine 
Argus, November 30, 1867, says: ''Within a circle of about 
ten miles around Rochester, embracing a part of Racine, Ke- 
nosha, Walworth, and Waukesha counties, is to be found, we 
think, the most extensive wool-growing section of the state 
of Wisconsin. The quality is very superior . . . and this 
year, in the eastern markets, our wool ranks fully equal to 
that of Michigan and brings a price accordingly. "^^ He adds 
that one of the dry goods merchants at Rochester had pur- 
chased that summer 185,000 pounds of wool. 

It is seen that the suggested circle excludes Whitewater, 
and it is true that that town was not especially well adapted 
to sheep, most of the land save in the northwest and the south- 
east being too low. Her leadership was due to the breeders, 
not the general farmers, and the high average of the clip 
both in Whitewater and in Mount Pleasant was due to the 
high per cent of purebred merinos in the count. Unimproved 
sheep, such as were driven up from the south in the early days, 
would shear about 2 pounds of wool apiece. A good flock of 
merinos often sheared 6 or 7 pounds. Individuals yielded 
much more than that. 

" Norway cornered with Mount Pleasant, yet the difference between the two 
towns in this respect argues that the people of Norway had benefited little from 
the improvement of sheep which was going on in their vicinity. 

" Compare map showing distribution of sheep in Wisconsin. Connor, op. cit., 
appendix. 



126 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Wool growing encountered difficulties from price fluctua- 
tions at various times before 1870. But by that date the 
price was dropping so steadily as to discourage Wisconsin 
wool growers, especially those engaged in raising fine wool. 
The consequences were two: First, many flocks were sold 
for shipment to the great western sheep ranges, where wool 
could be grown more cheaply; second, the mutton breeds, long 
and medium wooled, were substituted for the fine wools. 
When the new dairying came into full vigor during the seven- 
ties and the eighties, many farmers dropped the earlier in- 
terest in both wool and mutton, devoting themselves to the 
more dependable business of producing cheese and butter. 

Since 1870 sheep raising has been mostly on the decline in 
Wisconsin, but under the principles of diversified agriculture 
now advocated, it is held to be economical for every farmer 
to keep some sheep as a subsidiary line in connection with 
dairying, beef raising, or pork raising. Sheep, it is argued, 
will pasture the rougher lands, make best use of the coarser 
forage, and thus save what otherwise would be waste. A cer- 
tain small per cent of Wisconsin farmers have already gone 
back to sheep on this new basis. The breeds used are long 
and middle wools. 

Hogs are animals we have had always with us, but they have 
not always been the shapely, sleek, contented, and well be- 
haved creatures now to be seen on every farm. The original 
' ' prairie racer, ' ' product of devolution rather than evolution, 
was by no means a thing of beauty or an unqualified joy. He 
was tall, lean, bristly, with a neck nearly as long as his body 
and a fearsome tusky snout resembling that of the wild boar 
celebrated in the traditions of the chase. That this beast was 
troublesome is attested by the efforts of the pioneers to con- 
struct a satisfactory ''hog- tight" fence. And even when they 
had it, in the nine- or ten-rail "worm fence," these hogs, so 
tradition says (doubtless with some exaggeration), would put 
their heads through between the second and third rails and 
root up three rows of potatoes ! They matured very late, 
were unconscionable food wasters, and their flesh at best was 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 127 

only tolerable^'' So they required to be improved, and im- 
provement had a long way to go to reach the ideal. 

As already stated, hogs of the above description were 
brought up in droves from southern Indiana and southern 
Illinois to be sold to Wisconsin settlers. Practically all of the 
original stock of the territorial period was obtained in that 
way, and the droves continued to come for a number of years 
after statehood, though then they sought out the newer set- 
tlements. They were woods-grown swine which had been per- 
mitted to multiply, at random, with no particular care on the 
part of their owners and, naturally, no attention to breeding 
for improvement. Crossed with the improved breeds, like 
the Suffolk, Cheshire, or Berkshire, and kept under favorable 
farm conditions with good and abundant feed from birth to 
maturity, the stock was susceptible of rapid betterment. Most 
of the farmers of southeastern Wisconsin, being accustomed 
to keeping hogs in pens and paddocks, and feeding them regu- 
larly, also having familiarity with the breeds which were con- 
sidered the easiest keepers and best fatteners, were not con- 
tent to continue long with prairie hogs. A very few years 
were sufficient to change these into a type unrecognizable by 
the Hoosier drover, or to supplant them entirely with new 
stock derived from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, or some 
other part of the East. The rapidity with which pigs multiply 
made the process of improvement both easy and quick. A pair 
of good pigs was sometimes the means of transforming, in 
the space of five or six years, the pork raising interests of an 
entire county. The Wisconsin climate was too rigorous to 
favor the southern Indiana mode of hog raising, and besides, 
prairie settlers lacked the temptation of forests to serve for 
hog commons. All this tended to limit the number of hogs 
raised and also to encourage care and attention in both feed- 
ing and breeding. 

Of the standard English breeds of swine the Suffolk attained 
earliest popularity at the state fair. In 1853 S. B. Edwards 

" Many stories have been told to illustrate the fierceness of these half -wild hogs. 



128 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

of Troy, Walworth County, who is said to have done more 
to advance the pork industry than any other early breeder, 
exhibited at the state fair a pair of imported Suffolk pigs sii 
months old, and also a pair of imported Essex pigs. He made 
the Suffolks his specialty. However, there was but little in- 
terest in better swine, as shown by the small number of fair 
exhibits. In 1854 the entries numbered only 4, in 1855 none. 
In 1856 there were 22, mostly Suffolk and Essex. In 1857 the 
committee on award reported ''that their duties were not very 
arduous, as the number of swine present was very small, quite 
too limited even for a county fair, but the quality generally 
was very good." The prizes went to Rock, Walworth, and 
Waukesha counties, and the Suffolk breed was the only one 
mentioned by name. That breed continued to be the favorite 
apparently until the close of the Civil War, although York- 
shires, Chester whites, Sheffields, and Essexes appeared 
among the exhibits from time to time. 

In 1870, for the first time, the Agricultural Society's report 
featured swine strongly in the account of exhibits at the state 
fair. Swine were grouped under three classes: (1) small 
breeds (Suffolks, Chinas, Essexes, etc.) ; (2) large breeds 
(Berkshires, Chester whites, etc.) ; (3) animals not on list of 
prizes offered. The winner of the largest number of prizes 
was Richard Richards of Racine, who had exhibits in both the 
small breed and the large breed classes. Richards concen- 
trated, however, on the Berkshires, and the next year, 1871, he 
was shipping Berkshire pigs to distant California, where they 
arrived ''safe, salubrious, and satisfactory. "^ 7 

The date 1870 may be taken as fixing, roughly, the estab- 
lishment of a new interest in swine breeding. Prior to that 
time comparatively few farmers raised pork as a regular 
business. But, wheat growing having become demonstrably 
unprofitable, and the old-time glamour having passed also 
from wool growing, resort was had to the hog because corn 

" Letter of Eoger S. Day, consignee, dated Folsom, California, May 10, 1871. 
Tn Bacine Journal, May 24, 1871. 



IMPROVED LIVESTOCK 129 

could be grown successfully to any extent and marketed profit- 
ably in the form of pork, the cost of breeding stock was but a 
trifle, and the increase rapid and certain. Hogs, indeed, saved 
the careers of thousands of Wisconsin farmers brought to 
the verge of bankruptcy by unwise persistence in wheat rais- 
ing; so that the arresting term "mortgage-lifters" is not ill- 
applied to the porcine branch of farm livestock. The economy 
with which pork raising can be carried on in combination with 
dairying has enabled the business to survive all recent read- 
justments and to become in fact a permanent feature of Wis- 
consin agriculture. Purebreds of the several favorite breeds, 
such as Jersey reds, Poland Chinas, and Berkshires, are le- 
gion in all corn growing sections of the state. 



CHAPTER VIII 
LUMBERING AND FARMING 

A New England land seeker wrote in 1847 from Fort Win- 
nebago to his wife in the East, saying: ''Where I now am 
seems upon the confines of civilization. About a mile to the 
north of this place commences the Indian territory which ex- 
tends to Lake Superior. ... I intend to take a quarter-section 
of land on the Baraboo. . . . It is said to be a fine farming 
country with fine springs and streams of water. . . . Pine 
lumber can be bought there from 8 to 10 dollars per thousand 
and produce brings a higher price on account of its being near 
the pinery."^ 

Baraboo is in Sauk County, and the settlers there, as 
well as those in Columbia, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Winnebago, 
and Brown counties, were, by the time Wisconsin became a 
state, beginning to see marketing possibilities in the sawmills 
and lumber camps which were multiplying along the upper 
Wisconsin and its tributaries, near Green Bay, and in the 
Wolf River pinery. Woods work being carried on most ac- 
tively in winter, when frost, ice, and snow prepared roads 
into regions otherwise impenetrable, supplies could be 
transported on sleighs to almost every portion of the lum- 
bering area. Flour, pork, beef, and potatoes among farm 
products, also hay and corn or oats for the stock, were in 
sharp demand and brought good prices at the mills. Large 
numbers of oxen were required for draught in the woods. 
Men owning strong, well broken cattle could obtain winter 
employment at good wages, while vigorous young ax-men, 
raftsmen, and mill hands were always in demand during the 
season when work on the pioneer farms was at a standstill. 
Thus the advantages of farming in the neighborhood of big 

1 Letter of A. G. Tuttle, dated Feb. 15, 1847. Printed in Baraboo WeeUy 
News, May 4, 1922. 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 131 

and fairly permanent lumbering establishments were not few 
nor inconsiderable. Taken altogether they made so strong an 
attraction that, wherever good land could be obtained in 
proper locations, it was sure to be taken up as soon as possi- 
ble after the mills began operations. 

The lands of northern Wisconsin vary in character quite as 
much as those in the south. Wherever the pine forest covered 
the country continuously and fully, the problem of clearing 
made farming impracticable even after the timber was re- 
moved, because in the days when prairie lands were still cheap 
and abundant the expense of stumping could not have been 
borne. Many of those lands, which have been for some years 
cut over, are only now coming into cultivation, the process 
of removing stumps by blasting having demonstrated its 
economy. 

However, there were millions of acres of good farm land, 
in regions which also contained pineries, that presented 
no more serious obstacle to cultivation than the oak openings 
of the south and southeast, and other millions which involved 
much less slashing, grubbing, and burning than did the for- 
ested area near the shore of Lake Michigan. In fact, oak open- 
ings occupy a large part of such counties as Waupaca, Outa- 
gamie, Adams, Waushara, and Marquette — the first region of 
northern Wisconsin east of the river into which agricultural 
settlers thrust themselves, following in the wake of the lum- 
bering interest. The same was true of the limestone region 
in the north and west, settled almost as early in response to 
the lumbering activities on streams tributary to the upper 
Mississippi. 

Much of the remaining land was covered with varieties of 
hardwoods similar to those in the Milwaukee area, while the 
pine, which was the basis of the great lumber industry, stood 
largely in clusters on the rougher lands within a short dis- 
tance of the streams and rivers. The conditions, in short, fa- 
vored that combination and interplay of the two industries of 
lumbering and farming which is so distinctive a feature of 
northern Wisconsin historv. 



132 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

The lumbering opportunities of the upper Wisconsin were 
prospected very early. In 1828 timber was rafted down the 
river to build Fort Winnebago. Within a few years keen 
traders, like Daniel Whitney, were seeking Indian permits for 
mills; then the government stepped in, secured a cession of 
lands along the river, and in 1840 surveyed a six-mile strip as 
far up the river as the present Wausau. The market for pine 
lumber outside of Wisconsin was in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, 
and still farther south along the Mississippi, and it was a 
rapidly growing market. Except in times of panic or severe 
depression, there was hardly a limit to the amount of lumber 
that might be sold from the fleets of rafts which moored at 
the Mississippi ports. Besides, sawmills were erected at vari- 
ous places down the river, like Dubuque and Davenport in 
Iowa, which depended for their supply of saw logs on the 
pineries of Wisconsin. 

The pinery was tapped also from the upper Mississippi, 
particularly along the courses of the Chippewa, Eed 
Cedar, Black River, and the St. Croix. In these areas and on 
the upper Wisconsin, as well as on Lake Michigan, along the 
shores of Green Bay, and in the Wolf River country, the de- 
velopment of lumbering kept pace in a certain sense with the 
growth of the agricultural settlements of the southeast and 
the south. As early as 1840, according to the census of that 
year, the value of the lumber produced in Wisconsin was 
$202,239, while the bushels of wheat raised was 212,116. In 
other words, the value of Wisconsin 's lumber product, at that 
date, was greater than the value of her wheat. We have al- 
ready seen how rapidly the prairies and openings of the 
south were converted into wheat fields and how the product 
increased with the area of cultivation. While the lumbering 
business proceeded with less regularity, there were times 
when the onslaughts upon the forests of the north were fierce 
and relentless, so that the value of the product ultimately came 
to be far in excess of the value of Wisconsin's wheat. Pro- 
ceeding by decades, the census of 1850 assigned to the lumber 




THE PINERY 




A NORTHERN WISCONSIN SAWMILL 




DELIVERING HAY TO THE LUMBER CAMPS 
From Henry 's Northern JVisconsiii 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 133 

output a value of $1,218,506, while the next census showed 
$4,377,880. That was far less than the value of the golden 
wheat crop of 1860, but lumbering did not get under full head- 
way until the years following the Civil War, when the trans- 
formation of the great plains from a huge buffalo range into 
a million farms, all rendered accessible through an unprece- 
dented development of railways, created an unlimited market 
for pine lumber. In 1870 Wisconsin made lumber to the value 
of $15,130,719, which became $17,952,347 in 1880. Then we 
get the enormous leap to $60,966,444 in 1890, which is the 
culminating point in the lumber industry in this state. 
Thereafter it declined, as wheat raising had decreased a score 
of years earlier. 

By the time lumbering began to wane in importance almost 
every portion of northern Wisconsin had been tested agricul- 
turally, and the more accessible areas already supported a 
rural population of half a million or more. The grouping of 
the settlements was determined by a variety of factors. The 
first was proximity to the pineries, where were camps, mills, 
and mill towns that created an initial demand for agricultural 
produce at prices fully equal to what southern Wisconsin 
products brought in Chicago. This was the usual incentive for 
beginning the settlements. Secondly, the lumber output of 
the pineries induced the building of railway lines connecting 
the lumbering centers with one another and with the lake 
ports, and these railways in turn supplied the transportation 
facilities which enabled the farming interest to free itself 
from dependence upon the pineries' market, which was 
quickly glutted, and to expand as the environment presented 
opportunity. Opportunity, in any given region, was deter- 
mined by the character of the land, its soil, timber, the water 
supply, and such other considerations as affected the choice of 
lands in the older districts. 

The fairest opportunity for a large agricultural develop- 
ment in regions pioneered by the lumbermen came first in 
those counties near Fox River and Green Bay where the 



134 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Fox Eiver Canal, opened in 1851, guaranteed transportation 
for whatever produce could not be taken at the mills and 
camps, A line drawn from Green Bay due west to Stevens 
Point on the Wisconsin formed approximately the northern 
limit of that area, which occupied somewhat less territory 
than was contained in the Menominee cession of October 18, 
1848. Because of difficulties over the removal of the Indians, 
the lands were not surveyed till the years 1851 to 1855, but 
in advance of the surveys hundreds of squatters made claims 
within the newly created counties of Waushara, Waupaca, 
and Outagamie, as well as in Marquette County and the later 
Green Lake. With the progress of the survey a rush of set- 
tlement set in which quickly occupied most of the open lands, 
and gave to the five counties named an aggregate population 
by 1860 of 48,000. In addition, the counties of Adams and 
Portage had a combined population of 17,250, making a grand 
total for the region mainly included in the Menominee cession 
of 65,250,2 or nearly one-twelfth of the state's population at 
that census. 

Lumbering on the Chippewa and other streams entering 
the Mississippi has a history which is no less interesting than 
that of the Wisconsin and Wolf River areas. But, like the 
story just related, its significance in the present connection 
lies in the influence which it exerted upon the agricultural set- 
tlement of the then northwestern sections of the state. The 
Indian title to all that region had been extinguished by treaty 
as early as 1837, though many Indians remained for a num- 
ber of years to hunt through its great forests. United States 
surveyors began their work north and west of the Wisconsin 
in the year 1840. East of that river and north of the Fox, 
negotiations with the Indian claimants delayed operations 
some years longer, as stated above, but by 1856 the survey 
extended, solidly, to the new base line which had been estab- 
lished at the distance of six miles north of the forty-fifth par- 

" The county of Portage (see map, p. 138) is included in the New North. Yet, 
its early settlement was essentially a part of the general movement into the 
Menomonee cession. 



LUMBERING AND FARMING -135 

allel. Along St. Croix Eiver on the western boundary of 
the state several townships had been laid off as high up as the 
junction with that stream of Clam Eiver, and along the Me- 
nominee on the eastern state boundary township lines were 
established to the Big Quinisee Falls.'' In the Mississippi 
drainage basin the survey included the whole of Black Eiver 
valley, the Trempealeau and the Buffalo, also the lower 
courses of the Chippewa, the Eed Cedar, and the St. Croix.^ 
On all those streams the lumber business had attained large 
proportions and was giving rise to cities, of which La Crosse, 
just below the junction of Black Eiver with the Mississippi, 
was the chief.^ Meantime, lands located in the flood plains 
of these and other rivers, prairies in the vicinity of the great 
pineries or of the centers of milling and rafting, oak openings 
and other lightly wooded lands equally well located and pos- 
sessing good soil were being actively taken up by immigrant 
farmers. Transportation, as in the Menominee cession, was 
the determining factor in agricultural development as soon 
as the settlements produced a surplus above what the lumber 
business could absorb. To a certain extent, the Mississippi 
served as an outlet for grain as well as lumber, but the obsta- 
cles to its general use, already mentioned,® made the building 
of railroads to the lake ports the chief guarantee of a perma- 
nent market for farm products. The building of the Milwau- 
kee and Mississippi Eailway provided an outlet to the lake 
for the whole area. The completion almost at the same time 
of the La Crosse Eailway gave a powerful impulse to agricul- 
ture in the counties crossed by that line, as well as in those 
lying north of La Crosse on the Mississippi; for it was well 

' See map of Wisconsin, by Silas Chapman, 1856. 

* The Kickapoo, which enters the Wisconsin far down toward the mouth of 
that river but which taps a beautiful pinery in Monroe and Vernon counties, may 
well be associated with the Mississippi lumbering streams. 

' The Milwaukee Board of Trade estimated the lumber product of 1860 at 
800,000,000 feet, distributed as follows: Green Bay and west shore of Lake 
Michigan, 375,000,000; Wolf River pineries, 100,000,000; Mississippi and tribu- 
taries (including Wisconsin River), 325,000,000. A good brief account of lum- 
bering in Wisconsin is in Frederick Merk, Economic History. 

"See V. 41. 



136 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

understood that extensions reaching as far northwest as St. 
Paul would not be long delayed. 

The results were reflected in the census of 1860, which as- 
signed to the counties fronting on the Mississippi from Bad 
Ax (now Vernon) to St. Croix a combined population of 
42,000, to which should be added 20,000 from the 2 counties of 
Monroe and Juneau. The other counties in this region that 
had considerable populations were Dunn, Eau Claire, Chippe- 
wa, and Jackson, all served by navigable streams possessing 
apparently good transportation facilities.'^ 

To sum up: That portion of the state which on our map 
we designate the Old North, consisting of 16 counties, showed 
in 1860 an aggregate population of 122,327, or a trifle less than 
one-sixth of the total for the whole state. On the other hand, 
the vast, imperial domain, in area more than one-half of the 
state, which we call the New North, had at that time less than 
31,000. Most of those latter, no doubt, were connected in one 
way or another with the lumbering business. That the Old 
North was already mainly agricultural is revealed by the size 
of the population total, by the statistics of agricultural pro- 
duction, and by contemporary descriptions of various coun- 
ties. The bumper wheat crop of 1860, amounting to 27,000,000 
bushels, was appreciably indebted to the fresh fertility of the 
northern counties. The largest gross yield that year was 
from Dane County, 3,000,000 bushels, and the second best, 
2,229,000, was from Dodge. None of the northern counties 
could present records like these. Nevertheless, Green Lake 
produced 853,700, Marquette 171,000, Waupaca 170,000, Wau- 
shara 180,000, Outagamie 146,600, and Adams 191,500. This 
made an aggregate for the 6 counties east of the river of 
1,712,800 bushels. In the western counties Juneau had 
187,780, Monroe 196,000, La Crosse 297,670, Trempealeau 
105,000, Buffalo 44,600, Pepin 44,000, Pierce 174,560, and St. 
Croix 148,280, making an aggregate of 1,197,890. Adding 
1,049,400 for Door County, which with Kewaunee (possibly 

' The last four counties might, with almost equal propriety, be included either 
in the Old North or in the New North. 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 137 

included in this totaP) we credit to the Old North, the grand 
total for the region as a whole becomes nearly 4,000,000, or 
more than one-seventh of the state's crop. 

Such a record marks a good beginning in agriculture. But, 
as already stated,^ these northern counties were destined 
quickly to attain a leading place among the wheat producing 
sections of the state. With St. Croix County standing first in 
per capita production of wheat in 1869 and again in 1879, 
Buffalo first in 1889 and 1899, all doubts as to the agricultural 
character of that portion of northern Wisconsin may be set 
at rest. Eight of the northern counties in 1869 have places 
in the list of the first 14 wheat counties on the basis of per 
capita production, and a similar result appears from the tables 
representing production per square mile of improved land and 
degree of specialization.^*^ 

In 1870 these 16 counties were credited with a population of 
203,518. All but 4 had above 10,000 each, and 4 of those had 
15,000 and over. While most of the counties of the older 
south were more populous, this area was nevertheless so fully 
settled, and so well developed agriculturally, that we can 
properly regard it from this time as an extension of southern 
Wisconsin. The region already participated in all movements 
for the improvement of agriculture, such as diversification, 
livestock improvement, and dairying. In the years following 
1870 the people of those counties contributed heavily to the 
new agriculture of the state and developed among themselves 
certain specialties, among which cranberry culture and potato 
farming were perhaps the chief. 

Meantime, the 29 counties set off from the rest under the 
name of the New North (Fig. 16) still contrasted strongly 
with the new and enlarged south. With agriculture advancing 
in restricted areas, this was still mainly a region of forests, of 
which as yet only the pineries were interesting to the lumber- 

» There are no separate figures for Kewaunee County. Wis. State Agric. Soc, 
Trans., 1860, table p. 52-53. 

" See p. 95. 

" See tables in John G. Thompson, Wheat Baising in Wisconsin, Appendix. 



38 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 




^ ThE oIlD NORTM 

Sa Southern wi5C0N5itKsf??°? 



LA FAYETTb)j< 

FIGURE 16 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 139 

men. Enormous areas covered with finest hardwoods waited 
for their lumbering exploitation upon the exhaustion of the 
pine forests, and for their agricultural development upon the 
disappearance of the supply of fertile prairie lands in states 
farther west. Into these states Wisconsin was pouring her 
surplus population in generous measure, so that by 1890 nearly 
a quarter of a million natives of Wisconsin were found by the 
census takers living outside of her borders. Minnesota, for 
example, had absorbed 59,000, and Iowa 42,000. South Da- 
kota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas had taken an 
aggregate of 78,000, while the mountain states and the Pacific 
coast had made smaller drafts upon us. 

At that date the aggregate population of the 29 northern 
counties was only 361,500, and inasmuch as fully one-third of 
that number were foreign born it is doubtful if more than a 
third of the total consisted of natives of Wisconsin. This 
shows that the people had been spurning the lands of their own 
state lying in the wooded northern counties, while they con- 
tended eagerly with throngs of immigrants from every state 
in the union for a portion of those government lands which 
called for no grubbing, whether those lands lay 100, 500, or 
even 1000 miles farther from the general market. It was the 
age of prairie farming. The mind of the American farmer 
was set against the drudgery of land clearing, and he would 
not come back to it except under a kind of economic compul- 
sion. The census of 1890, which notes the passing of the 
frontier, established a convenient base from which to compute 
the pressure of that land shortage which gradually brought 
the vast and fertile areas of northern Wisconsin into requisi- 
tion for general farming. 

The lumbering business on a white pine basis has long since 
passed into the phase known as "cleaning up," which means 
that mills have been disappearing from section after section. 
To a considerable extent, lumbermen of Wisconsin secured 
holdings in the South and in the Pacific Northwest in antici- 
pation of the exhaustion of the Wisconsin pine forests, and 



140 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

many have dismantled their works in this state only to 
reestablish them elsewhere. Others have entered the hard- 
wood fields or, with modified plant, have undertaken various 
lines of manufacturing in which timber and lumber are the 
standard raw materials. The business centers, some of them 
cities of considerable note, which were created during the 
lumbering regime have always struggled to maintain them- 
selves when lumbering declined, and one way to do this was to 
promote lines of manufacturing based upon lumber. 

Another method which was peculiarly available to most of 
the northern Wisconsin towns was to promote the settling up 
by farmers of the neighboring cut-over pine lands, the burned 
tracts, and the lands covered with hardwoods. In 1895 the 
state legislature passed an act creating a State Board of Im- 
migration, with a secretary whose office was at Rhinelander 
in Oneida County. Money was also appropriated for the 
publication of a handbook to be prepared under the direction 
of Professor William A. Henry, dean of the College of Agri- 
culture, State University of Wisconsin. During the summer 
and fall of 1895 Professors Henry, King, and Goff spent much 
of their time in the north making careful examinations of the 
several districts with reference to their soils, the kinds of 
crops adapted to soil and climate, the possibilities of livestock 
production, dairying, sheep raising, fruit growing, etc. They 
made a fairly complete general agricultural survey of the 
northern part of the state, taking as their starting point a line 
drawn from Green Bay to Hudson on St. Croix River. 
The material arranged by Professor Henry was published 
in 1896 in a book containing nearly 200 pages and fully 
illustrated with cuts made from photographs taken in the 
course of the survey. It was called Northern Wisconsin, A 
Hcmdhooh for the Home Seeker, and is without question the 
most valuable single source of information in regard to 
northern Wisconsin at that time. It was distributed by means 
of the State Board of Immigration and also through immigra- 
tion bureaus established in 39 northern counties, including all 
of the 29 which we have called the New North. 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 141 

Professor Henry found agriculture well advanced at some 
points along his dividing line drawn from Green Bay to Hud- 
son. But at other points, especially in portions of Clark and 
Wood counties, conditions were still decidedly primitive ' ' ow- 
ing to the heavy hardwood forests which once entirely covered 
those sections." The same cause, a heavy covering of hard- 
woods, delayed the settlement of other great areas, as for 
example the huge belt of territory extending north from 
Portage and Waupaca counties and including large portions 
of Shawano, Marinette, Langlade, Forest, Oneida, and Flor- 
ence counties.^ ^ There were other large tracts covered with 
hardwoods, but since the hardwood timber was coming into 
demand and mills for its manufacture were springing up in 
many localities, settlers on those lands frequently found ready 
sale for their timber at prices which often left a profit after 
clearing the land.^^ 

Accordingly, Professor Henry did not hesitate to recom- 
mend the hardwood lands to settlers who were willing for 
some years to combine woods work with farming. Many of 
those lands, in fact, were taken up for homes by men who 
began as woodsmen, working for mill companies. As land- 
owners they continued to fell trees and get out logs for the 
mill, but they now sold logs rather than day's labor, and every 
tree that crashed to the ground let in more sunlight to warm 
the soil and get it ready to produce crops. Thousands of 
sturdy Northmen, many Germans, and other foreigners, and 
some native Americans changed their condition in this way 
from hired laborers to independent owners of valuable farms. 

Large tracts of forest, both pine and hardwood, from time 
to time had been burned over. Such a burned area was in 
appearance most forbidding. It showed gaunt, ghostly look- 
ing dead pines still erect, giant trunks burned off at the base 
and in falling arrested by other dead but standing timber, 

" See William A. Henry, Northern Wisconsin, A EandbooTc for the Home 
SeeJcer (Madison, Wis., 1896), 72. 

" Hardwood timber, which could not be floated on the streams like pine, waited 
for its exploitation and marketing upon the construction of railroads into the 
hardwood areas. 



142 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

half-buried logs overgrown and hidden by underbrush or by 
groves of saplings; in short, timber living and dead inextric- 
ably intermingled and nearly all worthless. Such a tract, in 
such condition, was costly to clear and brought little or no 
return for the wood taken off. Sometimes, however, a ' * dou- 
ble burn" occurred. That is, a burned-over forest such as we 
have just described would burn under a strong wind a second 
time. Now the dry dead timber served the purpose of helping 
to consume the green, stumps and all, leaving the land after 
the fire had passed practically clear so that much of it could 
be gotten ready for the plow at a nominal expense of about 
$1.00 per acre. 

Such land was the next thing to prairie. In fact, it prob- 
ably was prairie in the making. Those who took it for farms 
were hardly in worse case, as regards the labor of clearing, 
than the immigrants to North Dakota or western Nebraska, 
while on the double-burned lands of Wisconsin they were sure 
of firewood, sure of rainfall, sure of crops, and sure of a mar- 
ket for their products. This explains the popularity of such 
lands and the rapidity with which they settled up, once north- 
ern Wisconsin began to be looked upon as a farming country.^^ 

Last of the three great classes of timbered lands to be taken 
for farming was the cut-over pine lands, covered with pine 
stumps. In certain sections, it is true, pine grew on light, 
sandy, bowlder-strewn or gravelly soils, which were of little 
value for farming. But in general the soil of the pine lands 
was quite as good as that covered with hardwoods, the prevail- 
ing belief to the contrary being largely a prejudice brought by 
Wisconsin people from the East. One reason why settlers 
thought lightly of these cut-over lands was that the lumber 
companies thought too little of them to retain title after the 
timber was gone, allowing them to be sold by the county for 
taxes.^* 

" The great fire of 1871 practically cleared most of Door County, together with 
portions of Brown and Kewaunee. Other great forest fires also have an historical 
relation to the settlement of large tracts. 

"Later, land companies began to pay up the taxes on such lands and to 
receive from the counties certificates of tax payments known as " tax- titles. " 
These titles they gave to homeseekers who bought of them. 




A PARTLY CLEARED FARM ON CUT-OVER LAXDS 
From Henry's Northern ll'isconsiii 




A MARATHOX COUNTY FARM — NOTE OAT FIELD 
From Henry 's Nort]ieni IVisconsiii 




A HARDWOOD FOREST IN^ FLORENCE COUNTY 
From Henry 's Northern Wisconsin 




A NEW HOME IN THE NORTH 
From Henry's Northern Wisconsin 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 143 

Pine stumps will last nearly a hundred years, whereas the 
usual hardwoods rot out entirely within less than one-fifth of 
that time. There was no encouragement to take cut-over pine 
lands and wait for the stumps to rot away. However, it was 
found that after a few years their earth gripping rootlets de- 
cayed, making it much easier to lift or blow the stumps out of 
the ground. Stump pullers operating on the lifting plan have 
been used with considerable success. However, experiments 
by the College of Agriculture and by individuals have finally 
demonstrated the economy of using dynamite for clearing 
such land, and they have also shown what grade of explosive 
should be used for best results. The expense depends on the 
size and number of stumps per acre, also on the length of time 
during which their rootlets have been decaying. There is 
stump land which would cost $100 per acre to clear, though 
much of it would cost less than half that amount. Of course, 
at the higher figure men can afford to stump only the best of 
the pine lands. 

The soils of northern Wisconsin were grouped by Professor 
Henry under seven classes — sandy soil, sandy loam, prairie 
loam, clayey loam, loamy clay, heavy red clay, and swamp or 
humus soil. The greatest body of sandy soil is found in Mon- 
roe, Jackson, Adams, Juneau, Wood, and Portage counties — 
the great triangle in the Driftless Area covered with weath- 
ered sandstone soil unmixed with glacial material.^ ^ The 
lightest of these sandy soils requires irrigation for successful 
cropping. But not all sandy soils are equally light. Loamy 
sand is usually excellent, easy to clear, easy to work, warm, 
and responsive. With careful farming, to restore fertility as 
fast as crops consume it, such lands make excellent farms for 
certain crops, for sheep and other stock, though they are 
not of first quality for dairying because they produce grass 
too gingerly. 

The sandy loam type he found much more widely distributed 
over the north than the sandy soil. It covers most of the 

" See p. 8. 



144 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

glaciated portions of the state which are underlain by the 
upper Cambrian sandstone, the soil being a mixture of the 
materials brought from the north and spread over the surface 
by the glacier and the weathered sand from the Cambrian 
foundation. The greater part of Waupaca, Waushara, Mar- 
quette, portions of Monroe, Jackson, La Crosse, Trempealeau, 
most of Eau Claire and Dunn, and part of Chippewa County 
are covered with the sandy loam soil. Buffalo, Pierce, Pepin, 
St. Croix, and Polk have mostly clayey loam. Outagamie 
has heavy red clay and clayey loam. 

In the great area of the crystalline rock formation^® the 
soil is mostly a clayey loam except in the valley and about the 
headwaters of Wisconsin Eiver, where are sandy soils, sandy 
loams, with swamp or humus about the hundreds of lakes and 
marshes. Light soils also cover a strip from Menominee 
River to Green Bay, while Brown, Kewaunee, and Door coun- 
ties have mostly red clay, clayey loam, and loamy clay. The 
Lake Superior slope also has the heavy red clay — a strong, 
enduring soil, somewhat stiff to work but which was found to 
be greatly benefited by thorough underdraining. The ridges 
between the rivers flowing to Lake Superior and those flowing 
south contain a good deal of light, sandy, and stony soil not 
very valuable for farming. The working of the iron and 
copper deposits in that region is one of the causes, in addition 
to lumbering, that has built up Lake Superior cities, which in 
their turn have stimulated the development of farming to 
supply the market for all manner of farm products. 

When Henry's survey took place, in 1895, only the begin- 
nings of agriculture had been made along Lake Superior. The 
quarter-century which has passed since then has witnessed a 
great transformation, as the census of 1920 showed. The 
county of Douglas was credited with almost 50,000 population. 
Of these the city of Superior had 39,671, leaving slightly more 
than 10,000 to be distributed over the rest of the county, 
mostly on farms though there are several villages aggregating 

^•^ See map, p. 4. 



LUMBERING AND FARMING 145 

upwards of 1000. Bayfield County had an aggregate popula- 
tion of 17,201, about 5300 of whom lived in villages, the bal- 
ance on farms; while Ashland County, with an aggregate of 
24,538, had approximately 8000 living on farms, and Iron 
County had 5000. 

Regarding the 29 counties of the New North as a single 
region, we find that the population in 1920 aggregated 702,974, 
a gain in thirty years of 341,368. A part of that gain was in 
the cities, for it is still true, as it was in 1895, that the cities 
of the north are in advance of the country. But growth in 
recent years has been relatively more marked in the rural 
neighborhoods than in the towns. In twenty years the rural 
population increased 140,000, while the urban increased 45,000. 
In fact, northern Wisconsin was the only part of the state in 
which during the twenty years prior to the census of 1920 
rural population had been increasing at all. Everywhere else 
it was stationary or even on the decline. In the north, with 
large bodies of good land still out of cultivation, a continuous, 
sometimes a rapid, influx of agricultural immigrants took 
place. 

These immigrants were of all types, but the table of nativi- 
ties, extracted from the last census and printed herewith, 
shows that a very large proportion were Scandinavians, in- 
cluding Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, and Finns. These four 
classes taken together made 43,707 of the total, the Nor- 
wegians being most numerous (19,311), the Swedes coming 
next (15,881), the Finns third (5744), and the Danes last 
(2771). Of Germans there were 31,691, of Poles 13,740, and 
of Canadians 10,760. Other nationalities, as will be seen 
from the table, were negligible. 

Those who have accustomed themselves to think of northern 
Wisconsin as a vast, undeveloped wood land, and have failed 
both to keep up with statistics of growth or to view the coun- 
try at first hand, will be quite unprepared to appreciate the 
results of agricultural history in that region. It is startling 
to be told that Marathon County has a larger rural population 



146 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



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LUMBERING AND FARMING 147 

than has Dane County, yet such is the testimony of the cen^ 
sus, which also shows that Marathon has the largest rural 
population of all the 71 counties in Wisconsin, 46,598, Dane 
standing second with 45,953. There are in the northern group 
3 other counties with 30,000 or more rural inhabitants — ■■ 
namely, Barron, Clark, and Shawano; while 7 others—* 
Chippewa, Dunn, Marinette, Oconto, Polk, Portage, and 
Wood — have 20,000 or over. Only 5 of the 29 counties — 
Florence, Iron, Oneida, Sawyer, and Vilas — ^have less than 
10,000 rural inhabitants. 

The record of agricultural progress in the several districts 
and counties of northern Wisconsin cannot be treated in de^ 
tail. The Trcmsactions of the Northern Wisconsin Agricul- 
tural Society, 1872 to 1887, throw a good deal of light on what 
the people were doing to promote better farming, particu- 
larly in the border counties between the north and the south. 
The headquarters of that society were at Oshkosh, and the- 
annual fair was held at that place. Membership was not 
confined to the northern counties, and those north of Dane, 
Jefferson, and Milwaukee participated largely. 

In one aspect the section we have called the New North 
presents today many of the contrasts which were to be ob- 
served in the older Wisconsin of the south and southeast in 
1850. In the region are some of the finest farms in the state, 
with modern buildings, the best improved or purebred stock, 
and well tilled fields growing splendid crops of hay, grain, and 
silage corn. On such farms the old log house of pioneer days 
is often standing alongside of the new dwelling supplied with 
every convenience, including running water, plumbing, bath- 
room, and lighting. On the other hand, this is the region 
where the mud-daubed log house and the temporary board 
shack are still in use as homes of families. Northern Wis- 
consin is still a land of promise to the pioneer, and new homes 
are rising daily in the hardwoods and among the decaying pine 
stumps. It is a land of rural contrasts in other respects as 
well as in the homes and the farms. There are districts having 



\4& WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

the one-room log schoolhouses characteristic of the primitive 
days all over the older West. Yet, no section of the state has 
made greater progress in establishing the consolidated type 
of rural school, with thoroughly equipped school building, 
graded course of study, library, and high school facilities, 
which with well trained teachers is the true solution of the 
educational problems of rural communities. 

Northern Wisconsin is a land abounding in wild game and 
in streams and lakes teeming with fish. These allurements, 
coupled with its remaining forests, its diversified scenery, and 
temperate summer climate, have made it one of the summer 
playgrounds for tourists from southern Wisconsin and most 
of the Mississippi Valley states. Good roads and the automo- 
bile have played a decisive part in developing the tourist 
trade, which is a unique feature of life in the region. It is 
comparable to nothing in the experiences of the older Wiscon- 
sin communities, and its social as well as economic influence 
will be watched with deep interest. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 

A reported incident, for the substantial correctness of 
which I can vouch personally, throws much light on the con- 
dition of Wisconsin dairying during the period prior to the 
adoption of the factory system. Sometime in the seventies 
the storekeeper of a Grant County village received a visit 
from a traveling butter buyer who examined the accumulated 
supply of summer butter kept in the cellar under the store. 
He pierced with the trier firkins, jars, rolls, and ''pats" of the 
golden hued if not gilt edged product, sniffing and tasting as 
he passed from one lot to the next. Finally, after the exam- 
ination was completed, he said to the merchant: ''Well! All 
I can offer is six and a fourth; now you may take it or leave 
it." 

"No!" shot back the other. "You give me six and a half 
and take it or leave it." 

The buyer, slowly, "Well— I'll take it." 

Thus passed, perhaps to the last middleman before it 
reached the ultimate consumer, the summer's dairy product 
of a considerable farming neighborhood. The butter had been 
bought at from 5 to 10 cents and the sale price of the job 
lot would not have covered the original cost to the store- 
keeper, who relied for compensation on the profits of the 
goods sold in exchange for the butter. 

The chief obstacle to success in dairying under the old 
regime, particularly throughout the interior of the state, 
was the marketing problem. The sole dealer to whom the 
average farmer, or farmer's wife, resorted was the keeper of 
the village store, who commonly took butter, as he took eggs, 
salt pork, lard, and smoked meats, in exchange for groceries 
and other goods. In most cases buying butter was merely an 
accommodation to his patrons, and it goes without saying he 



150 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

was not in position to grade the product strictly or to pay in 
accordance with the standard of excellence producers main- 
tained. Much, very much, of the butter carried to the stores 
in the summer season was unfit for human food, and in fact 
was ultimately sold for grease at a few cents per pound. The 
good butter, properly packed in clean wooden firkins or in 
stone jars, could be disposed of at a higher figure. The mer- 
chant hoped to recoup himself from the sale of the better 
product for the losses he inevitably sustained on the worse; 
but like the instance recited above, he probably in most cases 
lost money on the aggregate, or would have done so but for 
the margin of profit taken on exchange goods. 

Under that system of marketing, farmers had no encour- 
agement to prepare for dairying by providing a proper dairy 
house, with desirable equipment for making the best quality 
butter ; little thought was given to the herd, its breeding, hous- 
ing, winter feeding, pasturing, and general management. In 
a word, dairying of the kind which depended on the country 
store for its market lacked every element of sound business 
and was merely incidental to providing milk and butter for 
the farm home. 

Such dairying had been carried on from the beginnings of 
agriculture in Wisconsin. Whenever a farmer resolved to 
make dairying an important feature of his operations, the 
first step was to find a more satisfactory market than the 
store. There were several ways of doing this. One was to 
establish a reputation for fine butter and then sell, at a con- 
tract price, directly to private families. The village doctor, 
lawyer, teacher, and banker — frequently others also — were 
glad to pay more than the store price in order to make sure of 
nice, savory butter for their tables. It was no uncommon 
thing for such patrons to pay 25 or 30 cents per pound cash 
the year around, for butter which would have brought at the 
store 10 cents in summer and 20 cents in winter. Under the 
stimulus of such a market, although it was sharply restricted, 
farmers here and there began to improve both their dairying 
practises and their herds. 




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A FARM "spring HOUSE'' 
From Eaglestoii 's A Circuit Eider 




A PIONEER HOUSEHOLD CHEESE PRESS USED IN 

RICHLAND COUNTY 

Original in State Historical Museum 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 151 

Another method was to sell no summer butter in summer, 
but to pack it carefully and keep it under such conditions as 
to make it marketable in fall, at a fair price, for shipment to 
city commission houses. To do that required either an ex- 
ceptionally cool, well ventilated, and clean cellar, or else a 
' ' spring house, ' ' the latter being preferable. The abundance 
of beautiful springs of pure cold water in many sections of 
the state made the stone or wooden spring house, with its deep 
troughs of flowing water, a not infrequent attribute of Wis- 
consin farms, though naturally only a small percentage of the 
whole were thus equipped. 

Farmers living in the vicinity of the large cities had special 
inducements to make their dairying count in the annual bal- 
ance. For they were able to sell their butter either directly 
to consumers at a fair contract price, or to middlemen who 
distributed directly to consumers and could afford to pay well 
for a first-class article. It is not surprising that the farmers 
of Kenosha County, almost equidistant from Chicago and Mil- 
waukee, should have been among the leading pioneers in im- 
proved dairying, as we find them to have been. For example, 
W. C. White of the town of Spring Prairie began butter 
dairying on a considerable scale as early as 1857, changing 
over to cheese a few years later.^ Others in the same county 
were almost equally prominent. The 1860 census presents the 
names of three Kenosha County farmers who, in the preceding 
year, made over 2000 pounds of butter apiece. They were 
W. C. White, Pleasant Prairie, 2800 pounds ; Philip Gascoyne 
of Somers, 3000; and Nicholas Kichtneys (probably Kicht- 
myer), 2100. The aggregate production of several Kenosha 
towns was very large, Brighton having 37,708 pounds, Bristol 
47,610, Paris 56,256, Pleasant Prairie 68,567, Somers 66,627, 

* Mr. White began making cheese in 1860. See Wisconsin Dairymen 's Associa- 
tion, Report, 1879, 124. Mr. White, it is said, was responsible for the dairyman's 
slogan, used so effectively at farmers' institutes thirty years later: "Speak to a 
cow as you 'd speak to a lady. ' ' The writer saw that admirable sentiment painted 
on a streamer which draped one side of the hall in which the Boscobel farmers* 
institute was held February, 1887. The opposite wall was decorated with a 
streamer of equal length bearing this significant comment on the above: "But 
don't speak to a lady as some men speak to a cow." 



152 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Salem 47,680, Wheatland 32,188, and Eandall 19,183. The 
heaviest production was in the two lake front towns of Pleas- 
ant Prairie and Somers ; the lightest in the two westernmost 
towns, Wheatland and Eandall. The aggregate butter pro- 
duction for the 8 towns was 376,620 pounds. Fifteen other 
Wisconsin counties produced more than that amount of butter. 
But if the population is taken into account, Kenosha was the 
largest per capita producer of butter, with one exception, of 
the 16 counties producing more than 300,000 pounds. The ex- 
ception was Green County, which produced 34+ pounds per 
capita as against 27+ pounds for Kenosha. If, however, we 
limit the competition to rural population strictly, Kenosha's 
per capita production is a fraction of a pound higher than 
Green's.- Contrary to current belief, Kenosha also produced 
more cheese than did Green County, or any other county.^ 
But the most significant fact revealed by the census is that a 
few farmers were really making a business of dairying. 

The counties in which by 1860 dairying was beginning to 
be carried on intensively were, in addition to the two named 
above, Racine County, which made approximately 35 pounds 
per capita of the rural population, and Milwaukee and Wal- 
worth, where the per capita production of butter was almost 
exactly 25 pounds. Each of these counties made a small 
amount of cheese, Walworth's quota being the largest of the 
three. 

Intensity of production, however, may mean merely what, 
for example, it meant in the case of Milwaukee County and 
less pronouncedly in Green County, namely, that practically 
all farmers kept a few cows and made butter or cheese, of 
course wholly under the household system of manufacture. 
In view of the development which became so marked a few 
years later, it is interesting to scan the census of 1860 for evi- 
dence of a tendency to make dairying an exclusive or principal 

= Kenosha, with a rural population of 9527, produced 378,966, making the 
average 38% nearly; Green County's rural population was 17,660, her aggregate 
673,966, or an average of SSl/o- 

" George DeLong of the town of Somers made 1000 pounds of butter and 6000 
pounds of cheese. He had 29 milch cows, while White had 23 and Gascoyne 16. 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 153 

business, of proportions which would call for special methods 
prophetic of the factory system. 

We have already noted something of the kind among the 
butter makers of Kenosha County. Examples have also been 
found in other counties. In Walworth John W. Newton of the 
town of Geneva kept 32 cows, making 400 pounds of butter 
and 10,300 pounds of cheese. P. A. Price of Kock County, 
near Janesville, made from 50 cows 600 pounds of butter and 
25,000 pounds of cheese. Milton Barber of Waukesha, from 
66 cows, made 10,000 pounds of butter and 10,000 pounds of 
cheese. J. V. Bobbins of Burke, Dane County, had 115 cows 
and made 4000 pounds of butter and 6000 pounds of cheese. 
There were in Jefferson County three herds of 21, 30, and 32 
cows producing respectively 6000, 3000, and 7000 pounds of 
cheese, besides 500, 1000, and 800 pounds butter. One of these 
belonged to Asa Favill.'* Fond du Lac also had three distin- 
guished herds of 25, 31, and 37 cows credited with both butter 
and cheese. In Green County, George Legler of New Glarus 
kept 29 cows, making 1000 pounds of butter and 3000 of 
cheese ; there was a larger herd in the town of York, 36 cows, 
credited with 1800 pounds of butter and 6500 pounds of 
cheese. Sauk County had one large herd, 41 cows, but the 
product divided between butter and cheese was very light. 

From the above survey it will be seen that dairying by 1860 
was well begun within the limits of the older Wisconsin ; that 
it tended to become a regular business among a select group 
of farmers who were widely scattered mainly in the south- 
eastern and southern counties; and that the suggestion of a 
factory system of production existed particularly as regards 
cheese making. But the rank and file of Wisconsin farmers 
were still carrying on in the old way, careless of the character 
of the cows, of the way they were kept, of the milk, cream, and 
butter, of the method of selling the product. 

* This Favill was an uncle of Stephen Favill of Lake Mills, one of the founders 
of the State Dairymen's Association and a prominent cheese manufacturer for 
many years. 



154 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

It is a far cry from that state of things to the Wisconsin 
dairying of thirty years later, and the story of building up 
the dairy interest in that interval provides the leading feature 
of recent agricultural history. 

The forces which operated to bring about the great and 
fundamental changes so easily recognizable were mainly four : 
the influence of the New York example ; the leadership of New 
York men; the scientizing and organizing agency of the Col- 
lege of Agriculture ; and the whole-hearted cooperation in the 
practical execution of plans and policies of Swiss, German, 
Scandinavian, and other farmers of foreign extraction to 
whom, more than to the native American element, the leaders 
learned to look for the daily exemplification of good methods 
and the elimination of bad practises. 

A speaker at the convention of the State Dairymen's As- 
sociation in 1875 said : ' ' Thirty-five years ago the bulk of the 
dairy product of America was made in central New York."^ 
That statement involves a certain exaggeration, inasmuch as 
New England, other middle states, and especially Ohio were 
producing much butter and some cheese. Yet, there can be no 
doubt that it was New York 's surplus production upon which, 
about 1840, the country began to rely for its supply of butter 
and cheese. Indeed, the demand could not be wholly met from 
that source, and English cheese continued to be imported to 
some extent until with the inordinate growth of the New York 
cheese crop after the introduction of the factory system in 
1851 and the contemporary drop in production abroad, due to 
the cattle plague, the foreign market was opened to Ameri- 
can cheese. The New Yorkers who came to Wisconsin in such 
large numbers from 1837 to 1850 knew something about the 
beginnings of a more scientific — at least a more business-like 
—system of dairying; while others, like the late ex-Governor 
Hoard, who came in the fifties, had had personal contact with 
a movement for improved agriculture under the dairying im- 
pulse which was similar in many respects to what we have 

•C. H. Wilder, Wisconsin Dairymen's Association, Beport, 1875, 30. 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 155 

seen in this state under such leadership as that of Mr. Hoard. 
The reports of the New York Board of Agriculture, the col- 
umns of the agricultural press, especially the Rural New 
Yorker, the lectures of scientific agriculturists, all described 
with enthusiasm the doings of dairymen in Herkimer, Oneida, 
Cayuga, Ontario, and other central New York counties. Their 
herds, chiefly Durhams and Devons, were held up as examples 
of good breeding, their barns and dairy houses were pictured 
for the instruction of farmers elsewhere, their methods of 
manufacture carefully set forth. 

Except to those who are unaware that people from the Em- 
pire State were so dominant in Wisconsin, there is no mystery 
in the fact that it was most frequently New York men who 
headed local movements for the building of cheese factories, 
for organizing breeders' associations and other means calcu- 
lated to develop the dairying interests. A study of the begin- 
nings of a new type of butter and cheese business in the sev- 
eral counties shows the New Yorkers to have been even more 
exclusively responsible for the results than Vermonters were 
for the spread of merino sheep or Morgan horses. In Ke- 
nosha W. C. White, in Sheboygan Hiram Smith, in Jefferson 
Stephen Favill, in Fond du Lac Chester Hazen, in Walworth 
R. McCutcheon, in Eock C. H. Wilder, in Dane E. P. Sherman, 
in Waukesha B. M. Hinckley, in Richland John A. Carswell — 
these are some of the local leaders, and nearly all of them 
were immigrants to Wisconsin from central New York.^ 

A good specimen of the outworking of the New York influ- 
ence, through example, is found in the way factory cheese 
making spread from Bear valley in Richland County to other 
parts of that county and to Grant County. A group of central 
New Yorkers was settled in Bear valley in the fifties. Among 
them were the Carswell brothers, the Beckwith brothers, H. L. 
Eaton, and others. Another New Yorker, L. G. Thomas of 
Herkimer County, started what is supposed to have been the 
first cheese factory in southwestern Wisconsin, near Lone 

•Hiram Smith was a Pennsylvanian. 



156 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Rock in 1865J Two years later the Carswell factory was 
begun, the next year the Beckwith factory, the next the Eaton 
factory, till Bear valley, which once grew wheat and hops, 
was densely populated with cows. Its farmers were prosper- 
ing as dairymen, while all around in the neighboring valleys 
of Richland, Grant, Sauk, and Iowa counties were mortgaged 
farms whose owners were dubiously contemplating emigra- 
tion to the West as perhaps the only means of relief. North- 
ern Grant County had no factory prior to the organization in 
1881 (possibly it was in 1880) of the Oak Grove factory in 
Blue River valley. That factory was started by H. Z. Fish 
of Herkimer County, son of a noted New York dairyman, with 
another Herkimer man as maker. It could not have been 
started, however, but for the Bear valley experience, which 
was brought to the farmers of the Blue River and Fennimore 
valleys by one of their own number whose brother was a 
prominent dairyman of Bear valley.^ That was the influence 
which induced farmers to subscribe cows enough to make the 
factory at Oak Grove pay. And the same influence enabled 
Mr. Fish to start several other factories in addition to that 
one. In a few years the whole region was supplied with cheese 
factories, whose combined product was sold by a cooperative 
board of trade located at Muscoda. 

When W. D. Hoard in 1870 began publishing the Jeffer- 
son County Union at Lake Mills, there were possibly not more 
than 45 or 50 cheese factories in Wisconsin.^ Having come in 

' See William D. Hoard, ' ' History of the Dairy Interest in Wisconsin, ' ' Wis- 
consin Dairymen's Association, Report, 1879, 126. 

* The local farmer was James A. Black. He was of Virginia stock and a nat- 
ural leader of men. But the story he told the neighbors, as he drove around the 
valley with Mr. Fish, was how successfully the factory cheese making system had 
worked out ' ' over on Bear Creek ' ' as testified by his brother J. Q. A. Black and 
as he had personally observed conditions there. 

"In the Transactions for 1870, published in 1871, Dr. J. W. Hoyt, secretary 
of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, caused to be printed tables exhibiting 
the manufactories of all the counties of Wisconsin. In these are included cheese 
factories, but vmfortunately the number of factories is not stated save sometimes 
when there is but one. We are given the capital invested, pounds of cheese made 
during the year, and the value of the products. We find, from that source, that one 
or more factories existed (presumably in 1870, though one cannot be certain 
that new creations of 1871 were rigorously excluded) in Dane, Dodge, Fond du 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 157 

1857 from Madison County, New York, and being in close 
touch with New York conditions, he was interested in promot- 
ing dairying in Jefferson County in accordance with Madison 
County examples. From news items about dairying progress 
he passed to editorial comment, and very soon his dairy 
column contained the most analytical, trenchant, and enlight- 
ening discussion of dairy problems. Since the ideas Mr. 
Hoard advocated were ultimately promulgated by others also 
and became dominant in the state, the most effectual method 
of revealing the features of Wisconsin's dairying development 
is to give some account of those ideas as Hoard presented 
them, first in the Jefferson County Union, then in Hoard's 
Dairyman, and meantime at hundreds of farmers' institutes, 
dairymen's conventions, and other gatherings of farmers. 

Hoard saw that the fundamental problem confronting Wis- 
consin farmers was the problem of marketing dairy products, 
especially cheese. Western markets, by 1872, were becoming 
glutted and it was necessary for Wisconsin manufacturers to 
break through into the eastern and English markets. This 
feat, no light one in the days when Wisconsin dairymen were 
without influence and New York's competition was so over- 
shadowing, was accomplished through the agency of the Wis- 
consin Dairymen's Association, organized in February, 1872, 
primarily for that purpose.^** 

Lac, Green Lake, Jefferson, Kenosha, La Crosse, Lafayette, Monroe, Outagamie, 
Blchland, Eock, Sauk, Sheboygan, and Walworth — 16 counties. The largest in- 
vestment in that line of manufacture was in Fond du Lac County, $26,300, where 
the product amounted to 441,842 pounds valued at $62,819. It seems probable 
that these figures represent some half dozen factories at least. Other counties 
which appear to have had several factories each are Green ($11,000 invested), 
Green Lake ($12,200), Jefferson ($18,000), Kenosha ("cheese factory"— $7820), 
Rock ($15,500), Sheboygan ($12,500), and Walworth ($14,500). From this show- 
ing, the estimate of 50 factories appears not excessive. It may be too low. Hoard 
himself in 1873 estimated the number in 1870 at more than 100. 

" The first activity of the Association was to establish market days at Water- 
town, where Wisconsin manufacturers could meet eastern commission men and 
learn what the market demanded in the way of quality, uniformity, and mode of 
packing the product. Chester Hazen of Ladoga, Fond du Lac County, whose 
factory was perhaps the first one established in the state, 1864, was the first manu- 
facturer of Wisconsin cheese to ship his product to the English market. This 
he did, it is believed at Mr. Hoard's suggestion, in 1873. 



158 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Then there was the problem of proper curing vaults for 
summer cheese, in order to preserve the flavor, and Mr. 
Hoard wrote editorials, visited sub-earth vaults in other 
states, and finally induced the McCutcheon firm to make the 
Wisconsin experiment which proved successful. By that and 
other methods of curing, Wisconsin's summer cheese could be 
put upon the market under conditions enabling it to compete 
with cheese produced in cooler summer climates, largely to 
the benefit of Wisconsin producers. Another problem was to 
cheapen the cost of winter feed for cows. Mr. Hoard con- 
tended during many years that Wisconsin was in a position 
not only to produce butter and cheese of equal quality with 
that of New York, but to produce it at a lower cost because 
land was cheaper, cows were cheaper, and feed was cheaper. 
But he was never disposed to let well alone, and when he saw 
in the silo, a French invention, the means of reducing the feed 
cost he was quite as prompt to seize upon it as were the dairy- 
men in New York. The result is physically apparent to any- 
one who crosses the state, by rail or vehicle, in any direction, 
in the uniformity with which farms are equipped with one 
or more, usually two, silos. 

Perhaps the greatest stroke of policy in which Mr. Hoard 
led was the policy of *' breeding sharply for milk" and paying 
less attention to the beef end of cattle raising. He insisted, 
with sound logic, many variations of statement, and convinc- 
ing illustrative stories, that those types of cattle which had 
been bred longest and most consistently for milk, butter, and 
cheese were the breeds for dairy farmers to specialize in. 
Wisconsin farmers had so long regarded the Durham and 
Devon, especially the former, as the breeds through which to 
improve their herds, that the prejudice in their favor was 
hard to uproot. By untiring though by no means wearisome 
preaching even that feat was accomplished. The ''dual pur- 
pose cow" was given no chance to fasten herself upon Wiscon- 
sin farmers, as she has been foisted by bad leadership upon 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 159 

the dairymen of some other states. That fact goes far to 
explain Wisconsin's preeminence in the dairy industry.^ ^ 

If it is difficult to overrate the significance of leadership like 
that of Mr. Hoard, it becomes impossible to fix standards for 
determining the value to Wisconsin's dairy interest of the 
work done during many years, under distinguished leaders, 
at the College of Agriculture connected with the University 
of Wisconsin. That college, the fruit of the Morrill Law of 
1862, was not without a struggle established as part of the 
University. The issue was finally decided in February, 1866, 
by a farmers' convention called by Dr. J. W. Hoyt, who was 
editor of the Wisconsin Farmer and secretary of the Wiscon- 
sin State Agricultural Society. The legislature, which was 
in session at the time and was partly pledged to establish the 
college elsewhere, practically accepted the convention's draft 
(which was Dr. Hoyt's draft) of a new fundamental law for 
the University, with the Agricultural College as an integral 
part of the institution.^- The result was hailed as a great 
triumph for scientific agriculture in Wisconsin. However, 
when it became apparent that the college educated practically 
no farmers, the attendance of students for some years being 
negligible, doubts arose in the minds of the farmers them- 
selves, who feared the connection with the University was 
blighting the prospects of the college. They then initiated 
a movement to separate the college from the University, and 
to reestablish it elsewhere than at Madison. That movement 
seemed not unlikely to succeed, but in the nick of time Profes- 
sor William A. Henry, who had been on the ground a few 
years and was already a prime favorite with the farmers, 
started in January, 1886, the unique agricultural short course, 
the instant success of which forestalled further efforts to re- 

" Mr. Hoard used to tell a charmiug story about a swift Morgan cavalry horse 
that enabled him to distance a detail of rebel troopers who would have captured him 
save for the animal's fleetness. Then he would ask, "What would have become 
of Hoard if that horse had been cross-bred with a percheron?" Moral: Breed 
for a purpose. 

" The senate voted to place the college at Ripon, or at least to give the agri- 
cultural college land grant to Eipon College. The house voted for the University, 
and in conference the senate receded. 



160 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

move the college. Henry's next great step was the inaugura- 
tion of the winter Dairy School for the training of butter 
makers and cheese makers. That school, also the first of its 
kind in America, was opened in the winter of 1887. Within 
a few years trained young men, properly certificated, were 
turned out in sufficient numbers to man the new factories, and 
it then became unnecessary longer to depend on Herkimer 
County and other New York cheese makers or on their ap- 
prentices trained in Wisconsin factories. 

The Dairy School, through the young men it graduated, 
made its anticipated contribution toward putting the dairy 
industry upon a scientific basis. But it did something more. 
Its teachers and research scientists themselves made contri- 
butions of incalculable value. Professor Stephen Moulton 
Babcock's milk tester solved a fundamental problem in mar- 
keting milk under the factory system with justice to all pro- 
ducers. It put the creamery on a new basis at once and 
greatly aided the cheese factory also.^^ Professor Henry's 
Feeds and Feeding and Professor Eussell's introduction of 
the bacteriological tests for the purification of herds from in- 
fectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, and his practical 
method of pasteurizing milk were only second in importance 
to the Babcock test in their influence on scientific dairying. 

Through its extension division and its publication depart- 
ment the College of Agriculture became the greatest single 
agency of dairy education among the farmers, the promoter 
of organizations helpful to dairying as well as other branches 
of agriculture, and the clearing-house of experiments con- 
ducted on farms and in factories. Farmers' conventions, 

^' The creamery, or butter factory, was a later development than the cheese 
factory, and for obvious reasons. In making cheese the whole milk of many cows — 
several hundred at least — can be handled conveniently in two or three deep vats 
of large capacity. In these vats it can be heated, coagulated, and the curd pre- 
pared for the presses. For the purpose of butter making it is impracticable to 
handle whole milk beyond a certain minimum amoimt, too much space being re- 
quired to set it for raising the cream. About 1879 the Fairlamb system of setting 
milk in graduated cans for creaming was adopted by some dairymen and by some 
creameries. Under that system farmers raised the cream and sold it by the inch, 
it being assumed that an inch of cream as shown by the gauge on A 's can was as 
valuable for butter making as an inch on B 's. But that was far from being the 




HIRAM SIMIT^I HALL (THE DAIRY SCHOOL), 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 




PROFESSOR STEPHEN MOULTON BABCOCK 
AND HIS MILK TESTER 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 161 

formerly held at the capitol under the auspices of the Agricul- 
tural Society, now came to be held at the University under 
college auspices. The farmers' institute, directed by the 
college, was established in 1886. Prom that year series of 
meetings were held in the several counties, which in character 
were mass meetings of farmers for the discussion of selected 
problems of agricultural improvement. Scientific men and 
practical farmers occupied the same platform, with the result 
that science was more closely controlled by experience and 
experience definitely guided by science. No other feature in 
the history of agricultural advancement, save possibly the 
more recent county agent system, has been so resultful in 
developing mutual respect and confidence between the farmer 
and the man of scientific learning. 

The above are but a few, although perhaps the chief, ways 
in which the College of Agriculture has functioned to the 
benefit of Wisconsin agriculture, particularly dairying. K 
it were possible to imagine its influence withdrawn, especially 
in the period beginning with the early eighties, our picture of 
rural Wisconsin would be sadly altered. 

It is a truism of military science that an army cannot be 
considered complete or fully effective unless the morale of its 
fighting forces is maintained constantly on a high plane. In 
Wisconsin, as elsewhere, the execution of dairying plans, pol- 
icies, and scientific directions was in the hands of the milkers, 
feeders, and breeders of cows — the everyday, plain, hard 
working, often tired and discouraged farmers. It is one thing 
to test out a theory at the experiment station barn or labora- 
tory, quite another to get it applied in farm practise. Some 

fact. The milk tester was the only solution for the problem of how to do justice 
to producers of cream from the standpoint of its butter content. The question of 
the uniformity of quality in cream was profoundly affected by the introduction of 
the centrifugal mechanical cream separator. But separated cream still varies a 
good deal, depending on how it is managed. In the earlier cheese factories all 
milk was paid for at a given rate per pound or hundredweight. Since some 
milk had in it two per cent of butter fat and some six per cent, it follows that those 
contributing the richer milk were discriminated against. By the butter fat test 
that difficulty is removed and it is now often contended that the milk which is 
poorer in fat is discriminated against, considering its relative value for cheese. 



162 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

farmers are unresponsive, some are unintelligent, and a 
larger number are wanting in the moral purpose to persevere 
in doing a new thing under instructions, in the hope of a 
future contingent reward, which after all is the main condition 
of success. Native Americans, while keen, intelligent, and 
eager for the profits of every new adventure in agriculture, 
were by no means all willing to pay the price of success in 
dairying, which involved steady application to the business 
every day, week, and month in the year, which interdicted 
summer vacations, day and night fishing excursions, often 
even (before the arrival of the auto) daytime visits to not 
distant friends. Many of them refused to be ' ' tied to a cow. ' ' 
Such farmers made a principal share of the troops of emi- 
grants who moved during the late seventies and the eighties 
to new wheat areas like the Dakotas, selling their farms to 
newly arrived German, Scandinavian, or Bohemian immi- 
grants. These new people became interspersed among those 
of the older American tradition who were willing to change 
their system of agriculture. Some rented farms, others hired 
out to Americans, but a goodly proportion bought farms 
either at once or after a few years ' experience and saving. 

In the end they became the guarantors of prosperity in 
dairying.^^ For, to begin with, they were accustomed to work, 
hard and persistently, the long year through. They craved no 
vacations aside from the usual holidays to which they were 
accustomed. To them it was no hardship to milk twice a day, 
feed and tend the cows, and deliver the milk at the factory. 
All that was *'in the day's work." Secondly, in beginning 
farming under a wholly new environment such as this country 
presented, they became of necessity pupils in a school of prac- 
tise, glad to receive helpful suggestions from any source. 
They developed, as it were, a habit of experimentation which, 

" An editorial by Mr. Hoard which was reprinted by the Wis. Farmer, Nov. 14, 
1874, refers to the economic advantage of dairying and makes the point that the 
chief objection to it — ^namely, that it requires attention every day in the year — is 
really one of the strongest arguments in its favor. It reduces the farming business 
to the "same law of success as any other." In any actual business one must 
invest his entire time if he would succeed. 



THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION 163 

in the period when dairying methods were undergoing revolu- 
tionary changes, was highly important. Thirdly, they were 
generally thrifty, intent first on paying for their farms and 
then on amassing a competency. These motives made them 
keen to take advantage of every suggestion the profitableness 
of which could be foreseen. They were less prompt than the 
Americans to enter upon ventures which seemed speculative, 
like paying high prices for purebred breeding stock, but when 
observation had proved the economy of such expenditures 
they gradually accepted them as a part of the better farming 
program. 

There is no disposition to minimize the part which native 
Americans took in carrying out the dairying program, for it 
goes without saying that thousands have been engaged in that 
work steadily and successfully. Neither is there any intention 
to deny to those of foreign birth a goodly share in the leader- 
ship, scientific and otherwise, which developed policies and 
secured their acceptance by farmers generally. The Swiss in 
Green County are a notable example of a group which adopted 
a special brand of cheese as the object of their enterprise and 
pursued its manufacture with extraordinary success. Many 
individuals among Germans, Scandinavians, and other for- 
eigners performed notable service in the educational phases 
of the movement.^ ^ On the whole, however, and by a kind of 
necessity, the first generation foreigners adapted themselves 
to plans made by the Americans rather than attempted either 
to impose or to carry out plans of their own. They were good 
cooperators and have been the basis of success in hundreds of 
factory associations. Their children and grandchildren, of 
course, are simply Americans, quite as likely to be the leaders 
in given communities as the descendants of the New York 
dairymen. 

The new dairying, which is the product of historical forces 
whose workings have been clearly discernible for fifty years, 

" The late Hans Buschbauer, of Eiverside Farm in Jefferson County, was a 
leading writer both on dairying and on other scientific phases of agriculture. His 
contributions appeared in the German press and the English also. 



164 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

and which owes to a few leaders a debt it is impossible to 
assess, has placed the state in the forefront of American dairy 
progress. By reason of it, Wisconsin farmers are in better 
case than farmers elsewhere over large areas. Even in times 
of severe depression the agricultural interests of Wisconsin 
remain strictly solvent, the cows managing always to pay their 
way. There are nearly 3,000,000 of these cows at the date of 
writing. Their product, normally, is worth $300,000,000 a 
year! Among them, not in the character of a bovine aristoc- 
racy but rather as a substantial prophecy of the barn-yard 
democracy of tomorrow, are 80,000 purebred Holsteins, 20,000 
purebred Guernseys, 8000 purebred Jerseys, and about 3000 
purebred Ayrshires. Space forbids even the attempt to sum- 
marize the history of the introduction and spread of the 
dairy breeds which, with their grades, impart to the pas- 
tures of Wisconsin a distinctive character. 

Most important of all has been the influence of dairying on 
the character of the farmer. Business principles, so painfully 
lacking under the old agriculture, have come to be universally 
applied in marketing products, and very widely also in the 
more prosaic features of farm management. The new dairy- 
ing has made the average farmer something of a scientist, and 
a good deal of a business man. 



CHAPTER X 

FARM LIFEi 

Occupationally, farm life was more varied and colorful 
during the interval between universal wheat growing and uni- 
versal dairying than in either of those two periods. It was 
an age of eager, almost feverish experimentation. Most farm- 
ers were in debt and had to produce something which would 
pay interest and taxes, or else sell out and go west. Some 
tried to outwit the chinch bugs by sowing their wheat mixed 
with oats, gathering the combined crop, and then separating 
the two kinds of grain by means of the fanning-mill. A few 
tried a recommended method of horse hoeing their wheat. 
Many raised barley and rye as market substitutes for wheat, 
others raised tobacco, others hops. In the lake shore counties, 
particularly the northern ones, field peas became a prominent 
and valuable crop. In all of them the growing of hay for 
market was a favorite pursuit. Some, who lived near the 
cities, found relief from the stress caused by the succession 
of wheat failures in market gardening. Horticulture had 
been widely practised as a household art, to provide home 
fruits on the farm, but except in a few cases not as a major 
enterprise.^ Now, favored districts, especially the Door 
Peninsula, entered upon apple growing as a business, this to 
be combined in recent years with cherry growing. The north- 
ern frontier farmers raised hay, oats, and other supplies for 
the pineries. 

* The greater part of this chapter refers to the middle or pre-dairying period, 
and some of the illustrative facts are drawn from the author's recollections of 
his own boyhood on a southwestern Wisconsin farm. 

' A State Horticultural Society was organized about the beginning of the 
statehood period, under the leadership of men like Dr. Philo E. Hoy of Eaeine. It 
performed invaluable service to the state in the way of popularizing a love of 
fruits and flowers. It was said that the severe winter of 1856-57 almost totally 
destroyed the orchards grown prior to that date; but, nothing daunted, the society 
urged replanting and the planting of new orchards about all homes which were 
nnsupplied. 



166 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

The majority of the farmers in southern Wisconsin, how- 
ever, turned their attention to livestock as the surest means 
of making a profit. There was little uniformity either in kind 
or in type of animals, and one might have seen a herd of 
grade Durham steers in one man's pasture, a herd of common, 
cows in that of the neighbor adjoining, horses in a third, and 
sheep in a fourth — depending on which the owners thought 
would pay best. A fifth farm might show few cattle, horses, 
or sheep, but its yards and clover fields would be overrun with 
hogs and pigs of all sizes and conditions. 

Perhaps the closest parallel to or nearest successor of the 
former extensive wheat grower as a man of business was the 
farmer who fattened cattle on a considerable scale. Such 
men were to be found in all the corn growing counties. They 
raised big fields of corn in place of the former fields of 
wheat, bought up stock cattle through the countryside from 
farmers having a few head each, fed out their corn and, when 
the cattle were fat, either shipped to Chicago themselves or 
sold to big dealers. The business called for a good deal of 
capital, which only a few could command, good judgment in 
selecting animals, and shrewd bargaining both in buying and 
in selling. Some farmers succeeded where others failed, and 
the successful cattle feeders rose to be almost a distinct class. 
They had business and social relations with other cattle men, 
as well as with the numerous farmers from whom they bought, 
with bankers, and with city commission merchants. In addi- 
tion, some of them were money lenders and held the mortgages 
on much farm property in their neighborhoods. This gave 
them power but not unmixed popularity. Thus the cattle 
feeding farmer enjoyed some of the opportunities and advan- 
tages which came to the western ranchman. But, unlike the 
ranchman, who was free, venturesome, untired, he often took 
his full share of the hard, plodding labor of field and barn- 
yard, remaining what the other would be apt to call "a hay- 
seed farmer."^ 

■ Cattle feeding as an alternative to dairying is still a business of considerable 
importance in certain sections of the state, notably the southwestern counties. 



FARM LIFE 167 

Corresponding to the variety of farm activities was a ka- 
leidoscopic diversity in farms and farm buildings. Fields 
were still enclosed, for the most part, fences being of boards, 
or boards and wire, of barbed-wire alone, of poles, and of 
the old ' ' worm fence ' ' type, which, however, was disappearing 
in the older districts. Buildings for housing the livestock 
were of every description, from the permanent hillside barn, 
well protected above the stone work by means of a coat of red 
paint, or the all frame type, built wholly above ground, with 
hayloft on the second floor, to the pioneer's frame of poles 
covered with straw. Cows were not generally stabled for 
milking but were milked in the "cow yard."^ Next to the 
diversity due to different types of farming was the pictur- 
esqueness imported into the rural neighborhoods through the 
mingling together of several distinct racial stocks. Although 
the southeastern counties were originally occupied almost ex- 
clusively by people from the Northeast and from Ohio, it 
was not long before many foreigners, especially Scandinavi- 
ans, Germans, Irish, and Welsh, were distributed among them. 
The Town Studies of the Wisconsin Domesday Book illustrate 
the point, showing how Mount Pleasant, for example, came to 
have one-third of its people of foreign birth, Whitewater one- 
fourth, and so on. Proportions like these left the general 
character of the community American, but the infusion of for- 
eign blood showed in several ways. While many immigrants 
came with money and bought good farms at once, some at first 
were poor. Such people lived in the log houses abandoned 
by the older farmers, or built new log or cheap frame houses 
on small tracts purchased to make the beginnings of their 
farms. Some of their children might be ''hired out" to near- 
by farmers, the boys as field help, the girls as housemaids. 
Meantime, their farms were started, and with hard work and 
thrift they were often enlarged until the labor of all the fam- 
ily was required properly to work them. 

* Hamlin Garland 's memory of the cow yard, as presented both in his short 
stories and in A Son of the Middle Border, is perhaps typical of the sense of 
loathing generated in sensitive minds by that institution. 



168 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Every foreign element had its own peculiar customs both 
inside the home and outside. In cookery they introduced new 
dishes, in gardening new plants and new varieties of flowers. 
G-ermans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, and others were wedded 
to gardening as a feature of home making. Some Americans 
also were excellent gardeners, but many of them were content 
to raise a few things only, like early potatoes, some cabbages 
and melons. With the foreigners gardening was a household 
art. The women and younger children performed the labor, 
and the garden — a small plot of ground next the house, highly 
fertilized, cultivated intensively, fenced against poultry by 
means of either pickets or woven willows — ^was apt to be a 
charming little world with its plats separated by lily bordered 
paths growing scores of different esculents, its currant and 
gooseberry bushes lining the fence, and its clusters of decora- 
tive flowers, shrubs, and vines. Perhaps there was also a 
''summer house" of lattice work covered with morning-glory. 
Though the houses of immigrants might be inferior to those 
of their American neighbors, their gardens, which guests were 
always glad to visit, compensated them in large measure. 

On their first little farms the foreigners frequently used 
oxen when horses were the rule among all other farmers. This 
made an interesting variation, both in the fields and on the 
highways. The foreign costumes, mode of speech, and social 
practises all differed at first from the American, but tended 
rapidly to grow less distinctive. The children in the schools 
were the quickest to assimilate American speech and customs, 
the women in the homes the last. But where immigrants of 
the same race lived in colonies, as in the northern lake shore 
counties and a few other sections, these changes proceeded 
much more slowly. There many old-world customs descended 
even to the grandchildren. 

A significant fact in connection with earlier foreign immi- 
grants to Wisconsin was the almost universal training of 
the adult in some line of useful endeavor. Among those who 
had not been farmers at home nearly all had some trade or 
craft, learned by apprenticeship. There were carpenters, 




A WALWORTH COUNTY FAMILY 

Grandparents emigrated from New England, children and grand- 
children born in Wisconsin 




Residence of Henry flatosta. 



RESIDENCE OP HENRY NATESTA, BERGEN^ ROCK PRAIRIE 
Modern phase of a Norwegian farm home 




THE DISAPPEAUIXG RAIL OR VIRG^XIA "^AVORJl" FENCE 




SAUSAGE GRINDER MADE BY A GERMAN IMMIGRANT 
Original in the State Historical Museum 



FARM LIFE 169 

cabinet makers, turners, plasterers, masons, painters, weavr 
ers, spinners, metal workers, book binders, musicians, mill- 
wrights, and wbeel-wrights. Occasionally, to the amusement 
of acclimatized immigrants, someone would appear who was 
equipped with a trade which, though very usable in the old 
country, had no market value here — for example, a tiler, or 
roof slater. Often enough these callings had little relation 
to the business of farming, yet nearly always the special skill 
showed somewhere in the arrangements of farm or home, and 
often it became invaluable to the neighborhood. If nothing 
more, the presence of men possessing such special gifts pro- 
duced a healthful wonderment in the young. The foreign 
craftsmen who actually functioned — for example, wood work- 
ers and iron workers — were better trained than the Americans 
in the same lines, just as foreign trained farmers were closer^ 
more careful cultivators. Consequently, their skill fixed the 
standards for the communities. Many a fine, though unpre-* 
tentious, farmhouse enjoys distinction today as a relic of thei 
pioneer period because some clever foreign trained carpenter, 
brick layer, or mason was given a free hand in its construe-, 
tion and played architect as well as builder. Hundreds of 
pieces of farmhouse furniture and bric-a-brac owe their exist-' 
ence to the same source of artistic skill and good workman- 
ship. Since everyone who had the opportunity to do so, nat- 
urally tried to reproduce the types of buildings and furniture 
with which he was familiar in the old country, some degree of 
variety was introduced by them into the environments of 
Wisconsin farm neighborhoods. 

If we were to extend this discussion to conduct and intellec- 
tual influences, one might say that the elaborate, formal cour- 
tesy displayed by well-bred foreign immigrants often left its 
impress upon sensitive youth, while the new horizons touched 
by their conversation about European politics, military his- 
tory, and social life excited the imagination of many an: 
American boy and girl. Even the superstitious folk tales of 
ghosts and giants related to children by foreign domestics and 
by hired men supplied a tinge of poetic color to lives which 



170 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

were all too completely immersed in existing realities. Their 
songs and instrmnental music, so different from the prevail- 
ing church music and the sentimental love songs of the Amer- 
icans, made another favorable contrast. On the other hand, 
the tendency among many foreigners to make excessive beer 
drinking a feature of their amusements created a very unfa- 
vorable impression upon the more rigid church-going tem- 
perance people, and reinforced their determination to do 
away with the liquor saloon by means of legal restrictions. 

There was much individuality in the way farmers, both 
Americans and foreigners, performed their farm work. To 
be sure, as in any other business, some men were industrious 
and clever workers, others were sluggish, careless, or lazy. 
But, in addition to that universal difference the good workers 
had methods of their own. One would depend more on hand 
work, like hoeing corn instead of cultivating with the use of 
horses, or cradling his small fields of grain instead of using 
the reaper. Another, more business-like, would use horse 
power for everything. In general, the Americans were apt to 
be horse farmers, the foreigners hand farmers; but there 
were many exceptions. Some would rise at an unconscionable 
hour, say half past three, and work until after dark; others 
followed the good old rule and labored in the field ''from sun 
to sun." If the hired men on Wisconsin farms had been di- 
arists, one would obtain pictures of interesting farmer person- 
alities as seen by their underlings. Every neighborhood had 
its hard drivers, who so overworked their men that it became 
difiScult for them to secure hands. 

• After the introduction of factory dairying, it was almost 
the universal practise to begin field work late in the morning 
and close early in the evening, say at half past five. But in 
the earlier period, the occasional farmer (usually an Ameri- 
can) who followed that practise was looked upon by his neigh- 
bors as *'lazy and shiftless," notwithstanding the appearance 
ef his crops, livestock, home, and barnyard belied such a con- 
clusion. The greatest divergence prevailed with respect to 
work on Sunday. Religious people generally kept Sunday 



FARM LIFE 171 

free from all work save the "chores." Some of them, how- 
ever, made rather free use of the biblical permission to drag 
one's ass or ox out of a pit on the Sabbath day. The trouble 
was that they were not at all literal in defining ox or ass, or 
in defining pit. The words covered any emergency job, and 
the habit, once formed, of doing exceptional jobs on Sunday, 
such jobs easily became numerous enough to occupy the 
farmer practically every Sunday in summer. And in those 
days, when the farmer worked on Sunday his men usually 
worked, his children worked, and of course his teams worked. 
The effect was a loss of morale all around. Those farmers, 
whether churchgoers or not — and many non-churchgoers were 
in that class — who rigorously kept Sunday as a day of rest 
for man and beast, encouraging the hired men to spend it well, 
in a restful way, giving the work animals a few hours of much 
relished freedom and smiling on the children's play, were sup- 
porters of a far wholesomer type of rural life. 

Religiously, those communities appear to have been most 
prosperous whose people were mainly of the same speech and 
same social condition even if they varied somewhat in reli- 
gious beliefs. Some of the American communities worshiped 
very harmoniously in that Protestant church which suited the 
majority sect, whether Presbyterian, Methodist, or some 
other. And the same was true of Germans, Scandinavians, 
and English or Welsh. Old Lutheran and Reformed did not 
always have separate churches, though when each sect was 
numerous they commonly did. Unity in other matters made 
unity in religion easier to achieve. Some churches, however, 
which were homogeneous doctrinally were divided racially 
and manifested much disharmony. 

The organizers of churches, both Catholics and Protestants, 
were often men of powerful personality who were able to con- 
tribute largely to the building up of rural life on its spiritual 
and intellectual sides. Yet it is doubtful if their work as insti- 
tution builders was always beneficial. Overzeal in the interest 
of the denominations they represented induced them fre- 
quently to start a second organization where one already ex- 



172 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

isted, or a third within a township having two others, thus 
weakening the support of all and making it impossible finally 
for the rural churches to maintain themselves against the 
rivalry of town and village. Many an abandoned wayside 
church stands as an accusing witness to such mistaken mis- 
sionary effort. It is also true that changes in rural life, the 
shifting of the population, the emigration of some of the 
original families, the influx of new families of a different 
faith, and particularly improvements in locomotion — better 
roads, lighter vehicles, speedier roadsters, the auto — all have 
helped to rob the rural communities of many once flourishing 
churches. 

The old-time camp meeting, a distinctively rural phenom- 
enon, entered Wisconsin soon after its settlement from the 
East. In August, 1838, there was held such a meeting in the 
grove along Root River near Racine, which is said to have 
been attended by hundreds of pioneer families from all the 
southeastern counties. It was the first one held in that sec- 
tion, if not the first in the state. The appointments were iden- 
tical with those described by Eggleston and other writers on 
religious conditions in the West. For example, the grounds at 
night were lighted in the regulation camp meeting fashion, by 
means of great fires built on elevated stages floored with poles 
and covered with earth.^ Such meetings continued to be held 
periodically in some communities until less than forty years 
ago. They have for the most part given place to the ''taber- 
nacle" revival meetings, now always centered in the towns. 

The intensity, or drive, which the farmer put into the work 
on the farm affected the children most directly. To the man 
who was intent merely upon getting more and more acres cul- 
tivated though it required night and Sunday work to do it, the 
time of his children was chiefly valuable for the amount of 
help they could give him. Their schooling was entirely sec- 
ondary, their recreational needs not even considered. Play 
was opposed to work. The boy who loved to play was apt to 

" See Bacine Argus, Aug. 15, 1838, for a full description of the meeting. 



FARM LIFE 173 

be stigmatized as "too lazy to work," and a similar judgment 
often fell with crushing weight on the boy or girl who was 
more than ordinarily fond of books and reading. The proba- 
bility is that about the same proportion of farm children were 
gifted in those days as at present, yet statistics of high school, 
academy, normal school, and college prove that the number 
who actually secured an opportunity for full intellectual de- 
velopment was exceedingly small in comparison with the num- 
bers who have that opportunity today. The reason is to be 
sought partly in the earlier deficiency of schools and the obsta- 
cles which an inflexible course of study placed in the paths of 
would-be scholars. But mainly it is to be found in the fam- 
ily's hardship involved in losing a boy's time from the farm 
labor and in finding the means of meeting inescapable ex- 
penses. Very few farmers, comparatively, could afford both 
the loss of a boy's time and the school expenses, so that if a 
boy really cared greatly to pursue learning he might reckon 
on a program which would entail sacrifice. For example, he 
would be obliged to work for his board, or else take time to 
earn money between the years or even the terms of schooling. 
Not infrequently the process was so long and so laborious 
that graduation found the candidate a mature man of thirty, 
with plenty of experience behind him to establish a firm, self- 
reliant character. " Getting an education," as the story of 
John Muir proves, was an heroic enterprise which remorse- 
lessly tested the ambition and moral stability of boys as well 
as their intellectual powers.® 

Despite its barrenness in many respects, the neighborhood 
district school was far more apt to be the inspirer of boys 
and girls than was the home, the church, or other social in- 
fluence to which the young were exposed. With all its short- 
comings the school was the one avowed 'literary institution" 
of the countryside. Many of the rural school teachers in our 
period were men of considerable attainments, sometimes 

'John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (Boston, 1913), containa 
the story of a Wisconsin farm boy 's struggle to obtain an education. 



174 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

boasting college degrees. Frequently they were graduates 
of some eastern academy or normal school. They taught rural 
schools in order to gain a teaching apprenticeship before tak- 
ing higher teaching positions, or as a stepping stone to one 
of the other learned professions, or to a business career. A 
few were farmers in the summer and teachers in the winter. 
Every neighborhood has its tradition of noted teachers of 
this type who left a lasting impression upon the community. 

It was these men, in large part, who were responsible for 
the steady trickle of students into the schools of higher learn- 
ing from country neighborhoods. Sometimes the direct word 
of advice or encouragement fired a boy's mind; more often 
perhaps it was the opportunity for self -testing furnished by 
the class competitions, literary and declamatory contests, and 
debates. For the live rural teacher stirred his pupils by 
arousing the whole community to an interest in what the 
school was doing, and by making the schoolhouse a social cen- 
ter in addition to a focus of intellectual activity. He arranged 
spelling matches which drew in the best spellers from ad- 
joining districts to compete with his scholars, his school ex- 
hibitions brought in most of the people of the district, and 
the debates, notwithstanding the strongly theoretical subjects 
commonly chosen, occasionally attracted wide attention 
through the county.^ 

School entertainments by no means exhausted the social 
and recreational facilities of farm neighborhoods, although 
they constituted a very important part of them. The ** singing 
school," also conducted at the schoolhouse, was a valid excuse 
for the assembling of boys and girls ; and when the peripatetic 
singing master, as sometimes happened, was both a good in- 
structor and a strong personality, the cultural influence of the 

*A Racine County school (No. 3) in 1868 debated the question "Shall the 
United States acquire the island of Cuba?" The liquor question, woman's suf- 
frage, capital punishment were all favorite subjects for school literary society 
debates. 




THE MEYER FAK.U 



Home of Baltliaser Henry Meyer during his student days at 
Oshkosh State Normal and University of Wisconsin 




HICKORY HILL FAI^M iiO.UE OF JOHN MUIR DURING HIS 
STUDENT DAYS AT TPIE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 

From liis Stnrn of Mi) Boyhood and Youth. By courtesy of tlie 
Houghton Mifflin Company 




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FARM LIFE 175 

meetings was not inconsiderable.* Their occasional concerts 
drew a more than local audience. 

About the year 1880 or 1881 (at least in southwestern Wis- 
consin) farm boys began to organize baseball clubs modeled 
after those already familiar in the towns. Having no Satur- 
day afternoon holiday, the practise meets and games were 
placed on Sunday afternoon. They attracted all of the young 
folks, a good many of the elders, and of course the farm hands. 
The result was wholesome in several ways. Though the 
games cost the players doubly sore muscles for a day or two 
during each week, and occasionally a broken finger, these 
gatherings put the cumulative force of social cooperation be- 
hind the unuttered demand of children for a recognition of 
the right to play. Incidentally, they went far to abolish Sun- 
day work on farms and, by a natural reaction on the part of 
the church people, led in many places to the custom of a 
Saturday half-holiday. 

All the world knows about the country ball or ''dance" of 
forty or fifty years ago, where dances were mostly quadrilles, 
the music ''fiddling," and the movements of the dancers 
guided less by art than by what, in terse country phrase, has 
been called "main strength and awkwardness." This signi- 
fies that the dancers' reactions to the rhythm of the music and 
the directions of the prompter were dictated by natural im- 
pulses gradually modified by experience, observation, and 
self-criticism ; not that they were necessarily devoid of grace 
and harmony. Boys and girls learned to dance by dancing in 
public as participants in a four-couple quadrille, with no pre- 
liminary private lessons to familiarize them with the motions, 
the changes, or the etiquette to be observed toward partners 
and others. To many an awkward youth the "first dance" 
was his social "baptism with fire," but those who possessed 
the right qualities were molded thereby with surprising 

* The state had some noted singing masters, like Luther Lyman of Whitewater, 
who maintained the same itinerary year after year for perhaps fifteen years, 
training an entire generation. Some of the singing masters were foreigners of 
excellent preparation. W. D. Hoard also was a singing school master for several 
years. 



176 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

promptness into well poised, courteous, gentlemanly fellows. 

From the standpoint of social training, the country dance 
performed a service of obvious value. Unfortunately, in many 
neighborhoods dancing tended to become too exclusive a form 
of recreation, thus depriving young people of other forms 
which were more educational or more healthful. Worst of all, 
balls of a public character were generally commercialized and 
they often came under the baleful influence of the saloon, of 
reckless drinkers, and of the rowdy element. On moral 
grounds some religious denominations opposed dancing, and 
every community was likely to have a pro-dancing party chal- 
lenged by a no-dancing party, which sometimes gave rise to 
bitter contests over questions of social policy.^ Perhaps no 
one thing did more to impair the social unity of neighbor- 
hoods, and to paralyze plans for providing wholesome recrea- 
tion, than the eternal question of dancing or no dancing. 

Many farmers made ''going to town" more or less a weekly 
holiday, taking Saturday for that purpose quite as regularly 
as the women took Monday for wash-day. The Saturday 
trade was a kind of ''clearance sale" for the village store- 
keepers, although prices were not marked down and little cash 
changed hands. The farmers brought in whatever they had 
to sell, especially butter and eggs, whose value would be 
checked off against the purchases and the balance charged or 
— more rarely — credited. But buying and selling was only 
the incentive of these weekly trips, not the exclusive motive. 
Farmers who had the habit would make an excuse to go to 
town even if there was no business justification for it. They 
felt the need of the customary relaxation, of dressing up, of 
the opportunity for conversation, for learning the news of 
the wider neighborhood, and for "seeing what was going on." 
Those who developed the saloon habit and wasted their time 
and money carousing are not considered in the above de- 
scription. 

• See the report of an excoriating sermon on dancing, in Stirling W. Brown, In 
the Limestone Valley (1900), 168-172. 



FARM LIFE 177 

The village merchant is not often credited with a social 
function, yet his store was a genuine social center. Perhaps 
for the older people it was the most important single social 
opportunity aside from the church, and its value for that 
purpose varied with the character of the storekeeper. In 
some cases he was an original and striking personage, men of 
inferior personality being apt quickly to fail. Dealing with 
a group of families which remained relatively constant, he 
gradually acquired much detailed knowledge of their affairs 
and could instantly speak the name of practically every man 
and woman of the countryside. He would see to it that the 
persons assembled in the store became acquainted with one 
another. He was always able to start the conversation with 
a pertinent question directed to this one, a comment uttered 
here, a remark countered there. The store of such a man was 
always on Saturday a buzzing reception hall with people com- 
ing and going, with groups of men and women constantly 
joined in the most spontaneous because unconscious and inci- 
dental social intercourse.^" 

The children and young people received less benefit from 
the town going habit than the elders, because their trips to 
town were less frequent and not at all regular. They went in 
force only on special occasions, such as Fourth of July, circus 
day, and fair time." 

It will be understood that the farm life above described was 
that of the open country, away from centers of population. 
Some farming communities were situated in the immediate 
neighborhoods of cities, towns, or prosperous villages, and 
their families participated in many of the social opportunities 
enjoyed by the urban people. They took advantage of the 

"See Grant Showerman, A Country Chronicle (New York, 1916). He gives a 
marvellously lifelike picture of the evening conference at the store (in Brookfield, 
Waukesha County) about 1880. He depicts the types of farm work, including 
sugar making, and also gives dramatic descriptions of the country ball and other 
rural amusements. 

" But it was a kind of vacation to them to have the parents away once a week. 
Work was less strenuous at such times, supervision was lax, and the spirit of fun 
rampant. Then, too, it was exciting to speculate about what the parents would 
bring home on their return. 



178 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

church services, the school, the library, the theatre, the recre- 
ational facilities, and the varied means of keeping in touch 
with the outside world which were denied to dwellers in the 
open country. Such families, so long as they prospered eco- 
nomically, had no serious social problems to meet. For they 
might live as well as the prosperous families in town and 
mingle socially with such families. But any falling-off in in- 
come meant a corresponding decline in status. Expenses being 
higher near the city than farther out, general farmers often 
failed to make ends meet. These farmers accordingly sold out 
to others^^ — largely foreigners — ^who lived more simply, 
adopted more intensive methods, raised more produce, and 
made the farms pay. Herein we find part of the explanation 
for the prevailingly foreign cast of the suburbanite farming 
population. Another is the fact that so many of the later 
foreign immigrants came from cities, where they were habit- 
uated to the delights of a well developed social life which they 
were unwilling to exchange for the compensations afforded 
by a home in the open country. They understood how to get 
the most out of a few acres of land, were accustomed to land 
values much in excess of those encountered in Wisconsin; 
some of them came well supplied with money to buy, and 
others were willing to mortgage the future, for many years, 
in order to obtain present enjoyment of a farm close in. A 
glance at successive series of land ownership charts of town- 
ships adjacent to the lake cities will show how, little by little, 
English names disappeared to be replaced by those of Ger- 
man, Dutch, Scandinavian, Bohemian, and Polish origins. 
A town like Sheboygan Falls, once occupied largely by farm- 
ers from New York, is now held in smaller tracts and farmed 
more intensively by farmers who are mainly Germans. 

The process of rural development, coupled with the extraor- 
dinary growth of towns, has already brought about a vast 

" The writer has personal knowledge of communities in the Dakotas whose 
families, now owning from 160 to 640 acres of land each and ranking as promi- 
nent, prosperous citizens, were emigrants about 1880 from undesirable farms in 
the hill country of southwestern Wisconsin. 



FARM LIFE 179 

increase in the suburbanite class of farmers. In effect also 
the motor car and good roads make it possible for those living 
not more than eight or ten miles from town or city to do their 
weekly shopping on Saturday night, after chores, as easily as 
formerly they could do it by taking the entire day. And it 
becomes equally practicable for them to enjoy the church, the 
theatre, lectures, and entertainments held in the near-by town, 
while they can visit more distant places with economy and 
ease. Thus farmers have now a vastly enlarged sphere of 
action, a larger circle of friends and acquaintances, and a 
multitude of social opportunities where formerly they had but 
few. 

All this proves beneficial to the rural family provided money 
is forthcoming to pay for the car and its upkeep, for the good 
roads, for the better attire of the young people, who now insist 
on city styles in all personal appointments, for a home with 
modern conveniences, especially flowing water, bathroom, 
electric light (or its equivalent), and for such household 
furniture, musical instruments, books, and magazines as are 
found in the city homes where the young folks visit and whose 
members they expect to entertain. In addition, the expense of 
educating children is greater, high school training being now 
a customary supplement to the graded school, and a college 
course, or at least special agricultural and home economics 
courses, being desired by a large proportion. Thus the suc- 
cess of farm life on the social side depends on the ability of 
the farmer to make the farm yield a more generous income 
than that to which earlier farmers were accustomed. 

In the new dairying, farmers have developed a methodology 
of success which may illustrate also what is possible in other 
lines. So many of the processes involved have been standard- 
ized that, assuming a reasonable or normal market,^^ results 
can be predicted with a good deal of accuracy. In the old days 
making butter to sell was a species of gambling, if only be- 
cause the farmer had the vaguest ideas as to how much butter 

" This at the moment of writing does not exist, and it creates the most acute 
country life problem, demanding statesmanlike handling. 



180 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

his cows would produce in the year, what amount and value of 
food they consumed, or what expenses were incurred in pro- 
duction. Today farmers have the means of determining food 
costs and labor costs, while the almost universal practise of 
testing butter fat production of cows gives to the herd an 
ascertained character and value in production. Moreover, 
breeding for performance has become, if not a science, at 
least a very widely understood and successfully practised art. 
Within uncertain but wide limits it is now known to be prac- 
ticable to increase production by careful breeding ; the farmer 
has his choice of a large number of recorded herds from which 
to select breeding stock, he has at his command the scientific 
advice of successful breeders, of the agricultural college, and 
of the county agricultural agent. It has been historically 
demonstrated many times that a herd of cows which averages 
200 pounds of butter fat can be improved by breeding and se- 
lection among the offspring until in a few years it is a 300- 
pouhd herd and soon thereafter a 400-pound herd. With 
purebreds records much higher than that have been obtained. 
It has also been shown that by using silage in summer as 
well as in winter, and by feeding soiling crops instead of 
pasturing exclusively, the unit of land per cow can be greatly 
reduced. Hiram Smith's ideal, as far back at least as thirty- 
five years ago, was 100 cows on 100 acres. His land was 
among the very best Wisconsin farm land for growing forage 
crops, roots, etc., and he may not have attained his ideal, but 
he and many others have approximated that standard. Ac- 
cordingly, the farmer who has a small farm, say 60 or 80 or 
even 40 acres, can today hope to succeed as a dairyman. In 
the past he could not do so, and therefore, when dairying 
became dominant the small farmer sold out to his neighbor 
and left Wisconsin just as, forty years earlier, his prototype 
in Vermont and in New York left those states to go to Wis- 
consin, Iowa, and Illinois. It was the departure from south- 
ern Wisconsin communities of so many small farmers that 
explains the actual reduction of the farm population in those 
counties at recent census periods. Obviously, the only prac- 



FARM LIFE 181 

ticable way to increase the rural population is to increase the 
number of farm families, and that, in a well settled country, 
means dividing the larger farms into smaller farms. The 
process of division has begun, and it constitutes the chief basis 
of hope that our rural population will be built up in numbers 
while retaining and improving the economic status already 
achieved. It is easy to estimate that 20 cows averaging 400 
pounds will make more profit for their owner than 40 300- 
pound cows. And if the 20 cows are maintained on 40 acres 
while the 40 cows required 160 acres, the profits will be further 
augmented by the saving of three-fourths of the land, which 
could be supporting other families to help maintain roads, 
consolidated schools, churches, and rural parks — thus raising 
farm life to the same plane of success socially that in normal 
times under the most approved system of farm management 
it occupies economically. 



The End 



APPENDIX 

A CENSUS OF OLD HOMESTEADS 
Edited by Edna Louise Jacobson 



A CENSUS OF OLD HOMESTEADS 

In the December, 1920, issue of the Wisconsin History Bul- 
letin, the State Historical Society addressed to the public 
through the newspapers of the state the following invitation 
and directions : 

The State Historical Society wishes to obtain and publish a census of those 
f arma sixty years old or more, which in this year 1920 are still in the families 
of the men and women who created them out of pieces of wild land. It 
matters not from whom the title originally came — whether the United States 
government, the state government, or a private owner. The only condition 
is that the laud must have been improved or made into a farm by the present 
owner or one of his or her ancestors. 

Owners of such family homesteads are requested to send in the requisite 
information about them without delay. For convenience in filing, the follow- 
ing form should be used: 

1. Description of land [Example: NE/4 SE/4 See. 7. T. No. 8 R.2W]. 

2. Maker of the farm [Example: James W. Jones]. 

3. Date at which ownership began [Example: 1842]. 

4. Origin of title [Example: From U. S. Govt. Cert, of Purchase No. 6763; 
From State. Cert, of Purchase No. 7321 ; From John Smith. Warranty deed, 
1B42]. 

5. Date of his settlement on the land [Example: 1843]. 

6. Proof of above statement as to date of settlement [Example: A letter 
written by the settler or some member of his family; some instrument or 
transaction which is of record; statement by original owner later in life; 
testimony of aged neighbors knowing the facts]. 

7. Name of present owner and relationship to original farmer [Example: 
Wesley G. Jones, grandson of James W. Jones]. 

8. If possible give a brief sketch of the original farmer, a photograph of 
him, and any photographs of the farm, with approximate dates. 

9. Description of the present farm. 

10. Date of report. 

Kindly send information to State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 
Wisconsin. 

The response was immediate and for a time encouraging. 
A considerable amount of data drifted in during the succeed- 
ing three or four months, after which there was a lull and then 
a complete cessation of letters about ancestral farms. In 
August, 1922, the invitation was repeated and a new group of 
entries came in for record. 



186 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

In preparing this first list for publication as an appendix 
to the History of Agriculture in Wisconsin, Miss Jacobson has 
selected from the data now in hand the most typical cases, dis- 
tributed somewhat evenly among the counties represented. 
Others will appear, in groups, from time to time. 

The State Historical Society of Wisconsin offers the oppor- 
tunity to owners of such farms to make a permanent record, 
but it does not feel called upon to canvass the state for data. 
What we receive from persons interested will be recorded in 
due time and in such form as seems advisable. 

Joseph Schafer. 

brown county 

Charles Williams Homestead. (1) Description of the land: Lot 105 
of subdivision of tract of land known as the "Williams Grant." (2) Maker 
of farm: Charles Williams, native of England. (3) Origin of title: War- 
ranty deed, 1860. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1861. (5) Present 
owner: Mrs. M. A. Bidwell, daughter of Charles Williams. (6) Date of 
report: December 27, 1920. 

When Charles Williams left England in 1850, he came first to Canada, and 
in 1858 to Green Bay. The farm which he developed is situated on a state 
trunk highway about five miles from De Pere. During the first winter Mr. 
Williams earned a living cutting wood and hauling it with oxen over the 
trail which has since been converted into this modern concrete road. 

Mrs. M. a. Bidwell, West De Pere. 

CEAWFOED COUNTY 

Michael Ward Homestead. (1) Description of the land: S V^ NE ^ 
and SE 1/4 SE ^4 Sec. 20, SW 14 SW ^4 Sec. 21, all in T 11 N, R 3W, Town 
of Clayton. (2) Maker of the farm: Michael Ward, born 1812, in County 
Galway, Ireland. (3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patents, 1854. (4) 
Date of settlement on the land: 1858. (5) Present owner: W. M. Ward, 
grandson of Michael Ward. (6) Date of report: Jan. 19, 1921. 

Michael Ward and his family came to Wisconsin from Dixon, Illinois, 
making the trip in the fall of 1858 with two yoke of oxen. They made a 
shelter of their carts and used them for houses until spring. The land com- 
prising this homestead contains many fine springs. 

W. M. Ward, Soldiers Grove. 

DANE COUNTY 
Henry Boning Homestead. (1) Description of the land: N V2 SW 
Va, SE 1/4 SW y4, W 14 NE 14 SE 14 Sec. 2, T 5N, R 8E, Town of Mont- 
rose. (2) Maker of farm: Henry Boning, native of village of Golden- 
stead, Oldenburg, Germany. (3) Origin of title: Warranty deed from 
Sebastian Waffle and wife, 1855. (4) Date of settlement on the land : 1855. 



APPENDIX 187 



(5) Present owner: Henry Boning, aged 93 years. (6) Date of report: 
Dee. 13, 1920. 

On his first trip to America, in 1843, Mr. Boning settled in Cincinnati. 
In 1850 he joined the California gold seekers, making the trip by way of 
Cape Horn. On his return he visited his native land, after a few years im- 
migrating to Wisconsin and settling on the farm he now owns. He cleared 
and broke the land, erected all the farm buildings, and set out many orna- 
mental trees. Helen Boning, Baseo. 

Sylvester Carpenter Homestead, (1) Description of the land: SE ^ 
SW 1/4, W 22 A. NW 1/4 SW 1/4, and SW 1/4 SW 1/4, all in Sec. 27, District 
No. 7. (2) Maker of farm: Sylvester Carpenter, native of New York. (3) 
Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patent, 1846. (4) Date of settlement on the 
land: 1846. (5) Present owner: Orlow Carpenter. (6) Date of report: 
Feb. 9, 1921. 

Sylvester Carpenter and his wife had for their first Wisconsin home a 
eomfortable house of sawed lumber hauled from Milwaukee; this house is 
now used as a granary. Across the land lay a well worn Indian trail from 
Lake Koshkonong to the Madison lakes. The farm yielded in 1848 mainly 
wheat, gradually changing until now it is one of the finest tobacco farms in 
Dane County. Mart Hart, Oconomowoc. 

David Chichester Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E I/2 SE 
lA Sec. 22 and W side W lA SW ^ Sec. 23, all in T 5N, R HE, Town of 
Dunkirk. (2) Maker of farm: David Chichester. (3) Origin of title: 
Purchase from Joseph Owens, 1849. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 
1849. (5) Present owner: Herman Chichester, son of David Chichester. 

(6) Date of report: January, 1921. 

The first house erected on the Chichester homestead was of logs; though 
small, it housed fourteen men who were working on the Chicago, Milwaukee, 
and St. Paul Railroad, which passed close to the farm. The log house was 
displaced in 1856 by a frame structure. The nearest market was Milwaukee, 
and to this place Mr. Chichester would haul his wheat by ox team and sell 
it for twenty-five or thirty cents a bushel. Mrs. C. E. Anthony. 

Youngs Hallock Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E ^/^ NE ^ 
and NW 1/4 NE lA Sec. 35, T 7N, R 8E, Town of Middleton. (2) Maker of 
farm: Youngs Hallock, native of town of Minisink, Orange County, New 
York. (3) Origin of title: U. S.. Govt, patent, 1847. (4) Date of settle- 
ment on the land: 1851. (5) Present owner: Hulett Hallock, son of 
Youngs Hallock. (6) Date of report: Mar. 11, 1921. 

In 1847 Youngs Hallock came to Wisconsin, and made his headquarters 
at Janesville while he and one John V. Cairns made land-seeking trips. His 
selection was not entirely a matter of choice, as much of the finest land could 
be bought only at a high price from speculators and Mr. Hallock's means 
were rather limited. The original house and barn were of oak framework. 
These with additions are still in use. Mary J. Hallock, Madison. 

Rudolph McChesney Homestead. (1) Description of the land: SW ^ 
Sec. 19, T 9N, R 9E, Town of Vienna. (2) Maker of farm: Rudolph 
McChesney. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from Asa G. Ransom, 1855. 



188 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



(4) Date of settlement on the land: 1856. (5) Present owner: Joseph B. 
McChesney, son of Rudolph McChesney. (6) Date of report: Feb. 5, 1921. 
The old trail from Madison to Baraboo, used in early days, was within a 
few rods of the house. Joseph B. McChesney, Dane. 

DODGE COUNTY 

John Becker Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E I/2 N ^ 
Sec. 33, T UN, R 17E, Town of Herman. (2) Maker of farm: John 
Becker. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from John Burger, 1859. (4) Date 
of settlement on the land: 1859. (5) Present owner: Peter Becker, son 
of John Becker. (6) Date of report: Feb. 4, 1921. 

In 1859 the Becker farm consisted of eighty acres, high and low land, which 
contained heavy timber and stones. Now the entire tract, with the exception 
of five acres reserved for pasture, is under cultivation, the low land tiled 
The stones have been used in the making of a fence along the entire width of 
the farm. Peter Becker, Rubicon. 

Nils Erickson Homestead. (1) Description of the land: Lot 5 and N 
part lot 6, Sec. 25; E part NW lA NW lA Sec. 25, aU in T 9N, R 16E, Town 
of Lebanon. (2) Maker of farm: Nils Erickson, native of Hittesdal, Norway. 
(3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patent, 1844. (4) Date of settlement on 
the land: April, 1845, (5) Present owner: Erick Erickson, son of Nils 
Erickson. (6) Date of report: Jan. 18, 1921. 

Mr. Erickson's first Wisconsin home was at Pine Lake, near Nashotah, 
where he remained for three years; he then removed to Dodge County, to a 
farm consisting of rolling land with clay soO, on the west bank of Rock 
River. Erick Erickson, Ixonia. 

John Jones Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E i/^ SW ^ 
Sec. 9, T 9N, R 15E; N 70 A. W % SE Vi See. 9, T 9N, R 15E; E 1/2 NW ^4 
Sec. 18, T 9N, R 15E, Town of Emmet. (2) Maker of farm: John Jones. 
(3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patent, 1845. (4) Date of settlement on 
the land: 1845. (5) Present owner: David Jones, son of John Jones. 
(6) Date of report: Jan. 19, 1921. 

Mr. Jones was looked upon as one of the leading farmers of his community. 
He took much interest in raising standard-bred horses and shorthorn cattle. 

David Jones, Watertown. 

DOOR COUNTY 

Robert Laurie Homestead. (1) Description of the land: Lot 3 of Sec. 
18, T 28N, R 26E, Town of Sebastopol. (2) Maker of farm: Robert 
Laurie, native of Scotland. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from Joseph 
Woodard, 1854. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1854. (5) Present 
owner: Christine A. Laurie, daughter of Robert Laurie. (6) Date of re- 
port : Feb. 14, 1921. 

Robert Laurie was a ship carpenter in Scotland, and plied his trade for 
a time after coming, in 1852, to Buffalo, New York, whither his brother 
Alexander had preceded him. In 1853 they left Buffalo in a boat of their 
own making, to look for timbered land near the water. Robert obtained a 
soldier's claim in Door County, on the shore of Sturgeon Bay, but did not 



APPENDIX 189 

settle on it until the following year. He cleared land and burned lime in 
the summer time, and in winter worked in the ship yards at Little Sturgeon. 
Later he developed the stone trade, the Laurie Stone Company being the out- 
come. Christine A. Laurie,, Sturgeon Bay. 

GEANT COUNTY 
David Gardner Homestead. (1) Description of the land: N Yz SW 14 
SW ^4, NW 14 SW 14, except part in NW corner lying WW of the road; NW 
y4 SE 1/4 SW 1/4; W 1/2 NE 1/4 SW 1/4; W 1/2 NE 1/4 NE 1/4 SW 1/4; SE 
lA NW 1/4; part of W 1/2 SW 1/4 NW 1/4 lying E of highway passing 
through same, all in Sec. 21, T 3N, R IW, Town of PlatteviUe. (2) Maker 
of farm: David Gardner, native of county of Meath, Ireland; born 1818. (3) 
Origin of title: Purchase from Thomas Hugill and Major John H. Roun- 
tree, 1847. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1842. (5) Present owners: 
John M. Gardner, Mary E. Gardner, Bee A. Gardner, Celia Gardner— children 
of David Gardner. (6) Date of report: Dee. 15, 1920. 

When David Gardner emigrated to America he settled first at Grand 
Gulf, Mississippi. In 1836 he came up the Mississippi River to Ottawa, 
Illinois, where he remained until 1840, when he came to PlattevOle. In 1842 
he built a double log house with an "upstairs" ; a small frame addition was 
built some years later. The present farm consists of 132 2/3 acres, with a 
flowing well upon it. D. J. Gardner, PlatteviUe. 

Jacob Hooser, Sr., Homestead. (1) Description of the land: N 1/2 SW 
% and SE ^ NW ^ Sec. 22, T 3N, R IW, Town of PlatteviUe. (2) Maker 
of farm: Jacob Hooser, Sr., native of Pennsylvania. (3) Origin of title: 
U. S. Govt, patent, 1831. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1831. (5) 
Present owner: Sarah B. Young, daughter of Jacob Hooser, Sr. (6) Date 
of report: Jan. 26, 1921. 

At the age of thirteen Jacob Hooser, Sr., came up the Mississippi as as- 
sistant cook on one of the first steamboats operating so far north on that 
river. He settled in PlatteviUe, three years later removing to the farm de- 
scribed above. At the outbreak of the Black Hawk War he took his family 
to Galena and there enlisted. After the capture of Black Hawk he returned 
to PlatteviUe, where he lived until his death. 

D. J. Gardner, PlatteviUe. 

JEFFERSON COUNTY 

Lorenzo Dow Fargo Homestead. (1) Description of the land: SE ^ 
NE 14 Sec. 7, T 7N, R 13E, Town of Lake Mills. (2) Maker of the farm: 
Lorenzo Dow Fargo, born in 1824, in parish of Chesterfield, Colchester, New 
London County, Connecticut. (3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, certificate of 
purchase, 1846. (4) Date of settlement on land: 1846. (5) Present own- 
ers: Mrs. Augusta Fargo Anderson and Mrs. Carrie Fargo Bicknell, 
daughters of Lorenzo Dow Fargo. (6) Date of report: Sept. 12, 1921. 

In 1845 Lorenzo Dow Fargo joined a party bound for Wisconsin Terri- 
tory, going by boat from Buffalo to Milwaukee. His brother Enoch, who 
accompanied him, had a new double wagon, and William Curre, also a fellow 
traveler, had a span of horses. To quote from Lorenzo Fargo's Autobi- 
ography : "We joined forces, loaded in carpet bags and started for Lake 



190 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 

Mills. Milwaukee consisted of cheaply constructed residences, a few pioneer 
stores and shops. We drove on into the 12-mile forest of beech, maple, bass- 
wood, elm, ash and oak. The road pretended to be a highway; but was one 
stretch of dodging mud holes and trees and constantly repairing the corduroy 
road. The first night we spent in a little half-way house in Wauwatosa. 
The second at Me Vane's double log hotel, where we paid fifty cents apiece 
for two square meals and lodging. Near Summit corners we had our first 
sight of a Wisconsin prairie and saw our first prairie chickens. Here was 
rich soil waiting for the pioneer's big breaking plough to turn the furrows. 
. Aztalan was a booming town. On the third night, November 8, 
1845, we reached Lake Mills and spent that night at the Morgan Bartlett 
hotel. 

"In February, 1846, I bought out Lon Perry's claim and went right to 
work getting out fencing." Mr. Fargo gradually added to his farm until it 
embraced over 500 acres. He was a great lover of nature, and in his last 
years he "turned his time and strength to reforesting his own woods and by 
his pen endeavored to arouse the people to a realization of the importance 
and necessity of planting trees for future generations." 

The Lorenzo Dow Fargo Free Public Library of Lake Mills was a gift 
of Mr. and Mrs. Fargo to the city. Mrs. Caerie Fargo Bicknell^ 

Los Angeles, Cal. 
MANITOWOC COUNTY 
George Goldie Homestead. (1) Description of the land: W 1/2 NW ^4 
Sec. 23, T 19N, R 23E, Town of Newton. (2) Maker of the farm: George 
Goldie, native of Connaught, Scotland. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from 
James T. Goldie, 1851. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1851. (5) 
Present owner: George S. Goldie, son of George Goldie. (6) Date of re- 
port : June 13, 1921. 

George Goldie and his brother James emigrated to America in 1849, coming 
directly to Wisconsin, where they obtained land. They spent their winters 
clearing land, and their summers sailing the Great Lakes. In 1853 George 
Goldie abandoned sailing, built a log house, and devoted himself seriously 
to making a fine farm out of the wilderness. 

George S. Goldie, Timothy. 
John Stangel Homestead. (1) Description of the land: S I/2 SE 14 
NW 1/4, 8V2 SW 1/4 NW 1/4, NW 1/4 SW 1/4 Sec. 5; NE 1/4 SE 
34 and SE l^ SE i^ Sec. 6, all in T 21N, R 24E, Town of Tisch Mills. (2) 
Maker of farm: John Stangel, native of Bohemia. (3) Origin of title: 
Claims received from the state in 1853, by Joseph Stangel, brother of John 
Stangel. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1856. (5) Present owner: 
Weneel M, Stangel, son of John Stangel. (6) Date of report: July, 1921. 
John Stangel and his wife took pride in the fact that they were owners 
of property, and labored untiringly to clear the land. When the govern- 
ment laid out its public roads, the Stangel homestead lay a quarter of a mile 
from the highway. A new site was therefore selected and buildings erected; 
the original house is still on the premises but is no longer used as a home. Mr. 
Stangel took a deep interest in education and religion. The records of the 



APPENDIX 191 

school district show that he served as a school officer for several years. The 
first Catholic church in the locality in which he lived was constructed mainly 
from lumber which he donated. Wencel M. Stangel, Tisch Mills. 

PIERCE COUNTY 
Isaac I. Foster Homestead. (1) Description of the land: S ^/^ SW ^ 
Sec. 12, T 27N, R 19 W, Town of River Falls. (2) Maker of the farm: 
Isaac I. Foster. (3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patent about 1840. (4) 
Present owner: Mrs. W. H. Putnam, granddaughter of Isaac I. Foster. 
(5) Date of report: Jan. 7, 1921. 
Isaac I. Foster was at one time county judge of Pierce County. 

Mrs. W. H. Putnam, River Falls. 

RACINE COUNTY 

Peter Mohrbacher Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E i/^ NE 
14 Sec. 13, T 4N, R 22E, Town of Caledonia. (2) Maker of the farm: 
Peter Mohrbacher. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from John A. Carswell 
and Horace Norton, 1847. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1847. (5) 
Present owner: Adam C. Mohrbacher, son of Peter Mohrbacher. (6) Date 
of report : Dec. 28, 1920. 

The price of the twenty acres of land purchased from Horace Norton 
was the hauling of a hundred loads of charcoal and barrels that were made 
on the place. For the rest of the land Mr. Mohrbacher paid $4.50 an acre. 
The original farm buildings are still standing; the present owner has bought 
land nearer the main highway, upon which modern structures have been 
erected. Adam C. Mohrbacher, Racine. 

RICHLAND COUNTY 

William Pickering Homestead. (1) Description of the land: NE ^ 
Sec. 8, N 1/2 SE lA and S 1/2 NE y4 Sec. 9, all in T 9N, R IW, Town of 
Eagle. (2) Maker of the farm: William Pickering, born in Lancashire, 
England, in 1818. (3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, certificates of purchase, 
1850. (4) Date of settlement on the land, 1853. (5) Present owner: 
Charles R. Pickering, son of William Pickering. (6) Date of report: July 
18, 1921. 

William Pickering left England in 1848 and came to Wisconsin for the 
purpose of owning a home — a goal he could not hope to reach in England. 
He believed that timber land would remain fertile longer than prairie land, 
and sought it first in the direction of Oshkosh. There he found that none 
other than pine land was subject to entry, and this he did not desire. He 
then retraced his steps toward Milwaukee and started westward. He learned 
that good land could be obtained in Eagle Township, and accordingly he 
entered the parcels described above — heavily timbered land nine miles north 
of Wisconsin River. Here he grappled with the forests and carved out a pro- 
ductive farm, in complete contrast with those farms of sandy soil on the south 
bank of the river. C. R. Pickering, Muscoda. 

ST. CROIX COUNTY 
S. H. Burr Homestead. (1) Description of the land: N Yo NW i/4, 
N 1/2 NE 14, N 1/2 SE 1/4 See. 30, T 28N, R 18W, Town of Kinniekinniek. 



192 WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



(2) Maker of the farm: Solomon Hale Burr, native of Conway, Massachu- 
setts. (3) Origin of title: Warranty deed from George W. Pratt, 1855. 
(4) Date of settlement on the land: April, 1855. (5) Present owner: 
Mrs. Louie Burr Fuller, daughter of Solomon H. Burr. (6) Date of report: 
Jan. 19, 1921. 

Mr. Burr's fii^st home in the West was at Princeton, Illinois, where he 
remained for twenty-two years. His Wisconsin farm was only one and one- 
half miles from River Falls, and is today one of the most picturesque farms 
on the well-known Kinnickinnick trout stream. During the antislavery con- 
tention Mr. Burr was a co-worker of Owen Lovejoy and a firm friend of the 
fugitive slave. Mrs. C. W. Fuller, Biver Falls. 

George W. Fuller Homestead. (1) Description of the land: NE ^ 
NW lA, SW lA NW 1/4, NW 1/4 NW 14 Sec. 22, T 28N, R 18W, Town of 
Kinnickinnick. (2) Maker of the farm: George W. Fuller, native of Madison, 
Ohio. (3) Origin of title: Warranty deed from James G. Crowns, 1854. 
(4) Date of settlement on the land: 1855. (5) Present owner: Frank 
N. Fuller, son of George W. Fuller. (6) Date of report: Jan. 18, 1921. 

When Mr. Fuller bought his farm in the town of Kinnickinnick, about ten 
acres were cleared and there was a log house on it. Soon he put up a frame 
dwelling, hauling the lumber from Eau Galle. The nearest market was Hud- 
son, fifteen miles distant. Mr. Fuller was a power in promoting whatever was 
best for his community. Frank N. Fuller, River Falls. 

SAUK COUNTY 

Solomon King Homestead. (1) Description of the land: NE ^ NW 14 
and S 1/2 NW 1/4 See. 3, T ION, R 6E ; W 1/2 SE 1/4 and E 1/2 SW 1/4 Sec. 
34, T UN, R 6E, all in the Town of Sumpter. (2) Maker of farm: Solomon 
King, native of Ohio. (3) Origin of title: U. S. Govt, patent and private 
purchase, 1848. (4) Date of settlement on the land: 1856. (5) Present 
owner: Elias D. King, son of Solomon King (all but three acres has been 
sold). (6) Date of report: Dec. 19, 1920. 

The King homestead is unique in the following particulars : 

1. It contains the "first circular silo on route 12 between Baraboo and 
Prairie du Sac." 

2. Its owner was the "first to use galvanized steel roofing, and also to use 
tiling for draining the farm." 

3. Its owner was the "first to practice subsoiling of land, which was done 
with profit." Elias D. King, Prairie du Sac. 

WALWOETH COUNTY 

Anson B. Warner Homestead. (1) Description of the land: W 1^ SW 
14 Sec. 6, T 4N, R 15E, Town of Whitewater. (2) Maker of farm: Anson 
B. Warner. (3) Origin of title: Purchase from Hoppins family, 1847. 
(4) Date of settlement on the land: 1847. (5) Present owner: H. R. 
Warner, grandson of Anson B. Warner. (6) Date of report: Jan. 3, 1921. 

Anson B. Warner paid $9.00 an acre for the land ; the present owner would 
not sell it for $350 an acre. Originally the north half of the farm was covered 
with scattered oaks and hazel brush. Some of the remainder had been broken 
with an ox team, but the work had been so poorly done that it had to be done 



APPENDIX 193 



again. A log house served as a home for the family for three years. This 
was replaced by a frame house which stood for fourteen years. The present 
brick house dates from about 1864. H. R. Warner, Whitewater. 

WASHINGTON COUNTY 

William Murray Homestead. (1) Description of the land: E I/2 NW 
1^ and NE Vi SW ^ Sec. 33, T 12N, R 20E, Town of Farmington. (2) 
Maker of the farm : William Murray, born in 1815, in Scotland. (3) Origin 
of title: U. S. certificates of purchase, 1848 and 1854. (4) Date of settle- 
ment on the land: 1848. (5) Present owner: William A. Murray, son 
of William Murray. (6) Date of report: Dec. 15, 1920. 

The Murray homestead is now a dairy farm. Three gravel pits are also 
a source of income. Merton W. Murray, West Bend. 

WAUKESHA COUNTY 

Jackson Kemper Homestead. (1) Description of the land: NW i/4 Sec. 
18, T 7N, R 18E, Town of Merton, and lots 1 and 2 and NE fr. l^ Sec. 13, 
T 7N, R 17E, Town of Summit. (2) Maker of the farm: Jackson Kemper, 
bishop of Wisconsin. (3) Origin of title: In part from the Territory of 
Wisconsin by Henry Dodge, governor; a patent dated July 17, 1846; and 
a part from United States by patent January 1, 1850. (4) Date of settle- 
ment on the land: 1846. (5) Present owner: Mary Ann Kemper Lemon, 
granddaughter of Jackson Kemper. (6) Date of report: Apr. 18, 1921. 

Bishop Kemper's farm was adjacent to Nashotah Mission. The road pass- 
ing the house was a military road from Fort Dearborn to Fort Winnebago; 
it is said that Jefferson Davis laid it out and worked it. The road was also 
used by the lead miners of Galena, Illinois, who were often seen with four 
or six yoke of oxen hauling wagons loaded with pig lead. 

The Bishop always employed a farmer to work the land. The house as 
it now stands consists of a frame portion built in 1846 and a stone addition 
erected in the early sixties. The Kemper home was for many years the 
center of hospitality for all connected with Nashotah House. 

Mrs. Charles H. Lemon, Milwaukee. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Ableman^ horse prizes for, 120. 

Adams, Gilbert, horse breeder, 119. 

Adams County, topography of, 3, 
131; foreign born in, 49; wheat 
production in 1860, 136. 

Addison County (Vt.), farms in, 59. 

Agricultural revolution, 149-164. 

Agricultural Society. See Wisconsin 
State Agricultural Society. 

Albany (N. Y.), as a market, 58-59. 

Aldemeys, at state fair of 1860, 116. 

Allegheny River, transportation on, 
59. 

Alluvial soil, defined, 7. 

America, colonial, exports of wheat 
from, 82. 

Americans, as Wisconsin immi- 
grants, 45-49, 57-64, 78 ; in north- 
em Wisconsin, 141; as dairymen, 
162. See also the several sections 
and states. 

Appleby, Jolin F., invents "knot- 
ter," 89, 93. 

Arena, on Wisconsin River, 26, 41. 

Argyle, on edge of prairie, 18. 

Ashland Coimty, population of, 145. 
Aspen trees, in Wisconsin, 17. 
Ayrshires, at state fair of 1860, 116. 
Aztalan, goods for, 69-70. 

Babcock, Stephen Moulton, invents 

milk tester, 160. 
Baden, emigrants from, 53. 
Bangor, in LaCrosse County, 54; 

wheat crops in, 93-94. 
Baraboo River, settlement begun on, 

130. 
Barber, Milton, dairyman, 153. 
Barley, production of, 102. 
Bams, types of, 67-69, 79, 167. 
Barron JELills, location, 2. 
Baseball, introduced, 175. 



Bavaria, emigrants from, 53. 
Bayfield County, population of, 145. 
Bear valley (Richland County), 

dairying in, 155. 
Beckley, Hosea, History of Ver- 
mont, 62. 
Beckwith brothers, Bear valley 

dairymen, 155. 
Belgian, breed of horses, 120. 
Beloit, settlements near, 33; ferry 

at, 74. 
Bennington County (Vt.), farms in, 

59. 
Berkshire, breed of swine, 113. 
Berkshire Agricultural Society, 

founded, 113. 
Big Quinisee Falls, surveys reach, 

135. 
Binders, in harvest fields, 87; inven- 
tion of self, 89. 
Birge, Mrs. Imogene Starin, donor, 

65. 
Birge, Julius C, letter, 68. 
Black, James A., cheese factory 

promoter, 156. 
Black Hawk War, importance of, 

26. 
Blaekhawk, breed of horses, 117- 

118 ; distribution of, 118. 
Black River, lumbering on, 132. 
Black River Falls, topography of, 

3,8. 
Black River valley, surveyed, 135. 
Blasting, mode of stumping, 131. 
Blue Mounds, road via, 74. 
Blue River, topography of, 12-13; 

dairying in valley, 156. 
Bonanza farming, described, 88. 
Boston, as a market, 59. 
Bottomley, Edwin, English settler, 

56, 76. 
British. See English and Scotch. 



198 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



British agriculture, crisis in, 83 ; de- 
cline of wheat growing, 83. 

British-Americans. See French- 
Canadians. 

British regime, in Wisconsin, 23-24. 

British Temperance Emigration So- 
ciety, colony, 56. 

Brighton (Kenosha Co.), dairy 
products, 151. 

Bristol (Kenosha Co.), dairy prod- 
ucts, 151. 

Brookfield, in Waukesha County, 
51-52; foreign born in, 54. 

Brooklyn, horse prizes for, 120. 

Brooks, Seymour, exhibitor, 116; 
dispersal sale of shorthorns, 116. 

Brown County, soil, 144; forested 
area, 13, 17, 40; population in 
1836, 27; map of, 28; foreign 
born in, 57 ; corn grown in, 100. 

Buffalo (N. Y.), lake port, 64. 

Buffalo County, driftless area of, 
10; forested area, 17; soil of, 144; 
foreign born in, 53; wheat pro- 
duction in, 95, 136-137. 

Buffalo valley, surveyed, 135. 

Bull, Stephen, horse breeder, 119. 

Bulls, confined, 115. 

Burlington, road to, 76. 

Burnett County, forested area, 17. 

Burrows, George B., bequest, xii; 
home of, 58. 

Buschbauer, Hans, agricultural lead- 
er, 163. 

Butter, production of, 97. 

Byfield, breed of hogs, 115. 

Cairo, Sir James, Prairie Farming 

in America, 63. 
Caledonia, in Columbia County, 54. 
California, emigration to, 90. 
Calumet County, forested area, 13, 

40. 
Cambria, in Columbia County, 54. 
Cambrian rocks, location, 3, 5, 8-11, 

19. 
Camp Douglas, rocks near, 3. 



Camp meeting, in Racine County, 

172. 
Canada, Wisconsin a part of, 1; 

emigrants from, 57. See also 

French- Canadians. 
Carswell, John A., prominent dairy- 
man, 155. 
Case, Jerome I., threshing machine 

inventor and manufacturer, 89; 

horse breeder, 119. 
Cassville, mining town, 26. 
Castle Rock, wheat grown in, 94. 
Cataract, in Monroe County, 56. 
Cattle, imported, 6; increase of, 97; 

distribution of, 101-102; exhibits 

of, 115; feeders, 166. See also 

the several breeds — Ayrshire, etc. 
Cayuga County (N. Y.), dairymen, 

155. 
Census of 1836, population, 27. 
Census of 1850, statistics, 37, 44, 54, 

64; described, 45; analyzed, 46- 

66; manuscript schedules, 46. 
Champlain Lake, farms on, 58-59; 

transportation on, 61, 64. 
Cheese, increased production of, 97; 

imported, 154; dairying for, 151; 

makers, 160. 
Cheese press, illustration, 151. 
Cheehire, breed of SAvine, 113. 
Chicago, trail from, 26, 32, 35, 74, 

77; effect on settlement, 31; canal 

project, 32; lumber companies, 

67-68; lake port, 70, 78; dairy 

market, 151. 
Chicago and Northwestern Railway, 

route, 12. 
China pig, breed of swine, 113. 
Chinch bug, damages by, 93. 
Chippewa County, soil of, 144. 
Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin, 1 ; 

land cession, 134. 
Chippewa River, lumbering on, 44, 

68, 132. 
Chippewa valley, survey in, 135. 
Chittenden County (Vt.), farms in, 

59. 
Churches. See Rural churches. 



INDEX 



199 



Circus, children's clay at, 177. 

Civil War, effect on agriculture, 84; 
on agricultural machinery, 88; on 
horse breeding, 118. 

Clam River, surveys reach, 135. 

Clapp, N. B., exhibitor of purebred 
sheep, 114. 

Clark, Charles M., cited, 117. 

Clark, Hiram C, History of Che- 
nango County, 62. 

Clark, John M., exhibitor of "Gen- 
eral Gift'ord," Morgan horse, 118; 
home of, 72. 

Clearing. See Lands. 

Clover, in rotation with wheat, 95; 
spread of culture of, 110. 

Clydesdale, breed of horses, 120. 

College of Agriculture, influence on 
dairying, 154, 159-161; extension 
division, 160; stumping experi- 
ments, 143. 

Columbia County, foreign born in, 
54-55; farms, 78; frame houses, 
78; grain production in, 99-100, 
102. 

Commons, for early settlers, 36, 78. 

Conununism, in Wisconsin, 57. 

Connor, L. G., Sheep Industry, 
122. 

Cooperstown, in Manitowoc County, 
52. 

Copeland, Louis A., "The Cornish 
Element in Southwestern Wiscon- 
sin," 49. 

Corn, grown in South, 81; not 
adapted to Wisconsin, 98; in- 
creased production, 97; types of, 
98 ; best lands for, 98-99 ; produc- 
tion by counties, 99 ; table of, 102 ; 
substitute for wheat, 99. 

Com Laws, in England, 82. 

Cornish, in Wisconsin, 48-49, 56. 

Cotswold, breed of imported sheep, 
113. 

County fairs, promote good live- 
stock, 113. 

Courtland, in Columbia County, 54. 



Cows, dual purpose of, 158; num- 
ber of purebreds, 164. See also 
Cattle. 

Cradle, harvesting implement, 87; 
illustration, 92. 

Cradlers, in harvest fields, 87. 

Cram, Captain T. J., map of 1839, 
40. 

Crawford County, in driftless area, 
10; forested area, 17; prairies in, 
18; population in 1836, 27; map 
of, 28 ; settlements in, 42, 79 ; for- 
eign bom in, 57. 

Creamery, illustration, 161. 

Crookes, Sir William, cited, 81. 

Curtler, W. H. R., History of Eng- 
lish Agriculture, 83. 

Gushing, Caleb, buys Wisconsin 
land, 30. 

Dairy School in Wisconsin Univer- 
sity, founded, 160; illustration, 
160. 

Dairying, in Vermont, 62; before 
factory system, 149 ; in 1860 sum- 
marized, 152-153; products, 105- 
106; new methodology of success, 
179; effect on farming, 164. 

Dairymen's Association. See Wis- 
consin Dairymen's Association. 

Dames, William, Wie Sieht Es in 
Wiskonsin aus, 38, 53. 

Dances, as community exercises, 
175-176. 

Dane County, driftless area of, 10; 
early settlements, 36, 78; towns 
in, 43; foreign bom, 50-51, 53, 
56; grain production in, 99-100, 
102, 136; livestock in, 103; mral 
population, 147. 

Danes, in Wisconsin, 47, 51, 145. 

Dayton, prize horses in, 120. 

De Forest, bonanza farm in, 88. 

Delafield, in Waukesha County, 54. 

Delavan, settled, 33. 

Delaware River, transportation on, 
59. 



200 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Devon, breed of cattle, 113-114, 155 ; 
illustration, 116. 

Dickey, A. P., horse breeder, 119. 

Diversified farming, discussed, 97- 
129; area, 104; effect on immi- 
gration, 111 ; changes toward, 109, 
111. 

Dodge County, geology of, 5; for- 
ested area, 13, 40; foreign bom 
in, 52-53, 57; roads in, 76; farms 
in, 78; grain production in, 99- 
100, 102, 136. 

Dodgeville, mining town, 26. 

Door County, forested area, 17, 40; 
timber burned, 142; soil, 144; 
wheat production in, 136; fruit, 
165. 

Douglas County, population in 1845, 
144. 

Dousman, George B., at Milwaukee, 
69-70. 

Drift, defined, 7-8; effect on 
swamps, 19. 

Driftless Area, location, 3, 6-7; map 
of, 9 ; described, 9-13 ; free from 
marshes, 19; lead mines in, 24; 
settlement in, 91. 

Dubuque, Julien, lead miner, 24. 

Dubuque County (la.), lead mines 
in, 24. 

Dunkirk (N. Y.), as a terminus, 63. 

Dunn County, prairies in, 10; soil 
of, 144. 

Durham, breed of cattle, 155; illus- 
tration, 116. 

Dutch, in Wisconsin, 38, 47, 57. 

Dwight, Timothy, Travels in New 
England and New York, 65, 77. 

Eagle, wheat growing in, 94. 
Eaton, H. L., Bear valley dairyman, 

155. 
Eau Claire County, driftless area 

of, 10; soil, 144. 
Edwards, S. B., hog breeder, 127- 

128. 
Eilson, EUing, home of, 52. 



Elkhorn Prairie, location, 18; set- 
tled, 33. 

Elmira (N. Y.), as a terminus, 63. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, buys Wis- 
consin land, 30. 

Emigration, from Wisconsin, 139; 
from poor farms, 178. 

Emmet, in Jefferson County, 54. 

Empire, in Fond du Lac County, 
54, 94. 

Enclosures — 1851-71, in England, 
83. 

English, in Wisconsin, 46, 49-50, 
54, 66-67. See also Cornish. 

English Prairie. See Muscoda. 

Episcopalians, in Wisconsin, 57. 

Erie Canal, importance of, 59, 63. 

Erosion, effects of, 10-13, 19, 21. 

Esterly, George, invents harvesting 
machine, 88, 92. 

European immigrants. See the sev- 
eral nations. 

Everett, Edward, buys Wisconsin 
land, 30. 

Factory system, in New York, 154. 

Farm life in Wisconsin, 165-181; 
effects on children, 172-173; com- 
bined with lumbering, 140-141. 

Farmers' institutes, influence of, 
161. 

Favill, Asa, pioneer dairyman, 153. 

Favill, Stephen, famous dairyman, 
153. 

Feed producing area, limits of, 104. 

Fences, kinds of, 167. 

Fennimore, valley at, 13; dairying 
in, 156. 

Ferries, in pioneer Wisconsin, 74. 

Fever River, steamboats on, 26. 

Finns, in New North, 145. 

Fish, H. Z., cheese maker, 156. 

Fish, in northern Wisconsin, 148. 

Flambeau Ridge, location, 2. 

Florence County, forested area in, 
141, 143. 



INDEX 



201 



Fond du Lac, on edge of prairie, 
18; settlement, 40; railroad to, 
91. 
Fond du Lac County, forested area, 
13, 40; foreign born in, 52, 54, 
56-57; roads in, 76; farms, 78; 
grain production, 100, 102; live- 
stock, 103; dairying, 153. 
Food, easily procured by pioneers, 

70-71. 
Foreigners, in early settlements, 37- 
40, 45-57, 79; assimilation of, 
168; farm localities of, 178; ar- 
tizans among, 168. See also the 
several nationalities — Dutch, 
English, Germans, etc. 
Forest County, forested area in, 

141. 
Forests, area of, 13, 17, 19, 21-22; 
map of, 16; clearing of, 22, 76- 
77, 143; burned tracts in, 141- 
142; relation to wheat growing, 
95. 
Fort Crawford, location, 12; trail 

to, 26 ; road to, 74. 
Fort Howard, road to, 12, 74. 
Fort Winnebago, location, 12; trail 
to, 26; road to, 74; timber for, 
132. 
Foster, Mary Stuart, aid acknowl- 
edged, xiii, 25. 
Four Lakes region, topography, 12. 
Fowler, John, Journal of a Tour in 

the State of New York, 64. 
Fox Indians, in Wisconsin, 1. 
Fox River, buried forest on, 13; 

forests on, 19; farming, 41. 
Fox River Canal, plans for, 78; 

opening of, 134. 
Fox River (Pishtaka) of the Illi- 
nois, settlement along, 32-33, 36, 
50, 56. 
Fox- Wisconsin waterway, historical 
importance of, 1 ; as a boundary, 
18, 26-27. 
Franklin, settlement of, 38, 54. 
Franklin County (Vt.), farms in, 
59. 



Freistadt colony, in Washington 

County, 52. 
French regime, in Wisconsin, 23-24, 

43. 
French- Canadians, in Wisconsin, 

47, 57. 
Furniture, in pioneer Wisconsin, 

69-70. 
Fur trade, era of, 23-24. 

Galena (I1L)> ^ead mines near, 24, 

26 ; road to, 74. 
Galena-Blackriver, strata, 5, 10, 24. 
Game, early abundance, 71; in 

northern Wisconsin, 148. , 
Gardening, among foreign settlers,. 

168. 
Gardner, David, pioneer, 69-70. 
Garland, Hamlin, A Son of the 

Middle Border, 89, 167. 
Gascoyne, Philip, pioneer dairy- . 

man, 151. 
Genesee, in Waukesha Co.unty, 54, . 

57. 
Geneva Lake, settlements near, 33,; 

contest at, 73. 
Geology, of Wisconsin, 1-22. , 

Germans, in Wisconsin, 38, 47, 49- 

54, 78, 141. 
Glacial action, in Wisconsin, 6-9, ; 

13. 
Goff, Emmett S., investigates north- : 

em Wisconsin, 140. 
Grant, Ulysses S., Report on the 

Lead and Zine Deposits, 24, 44. 
Grant County, in drif tless area, 10 ; 
prairies in, 18 ; lead mines in, 24 ; 
part of Iowa 'County, 27; native 
born in, 47-48; foreign born, 49, 
56-57 ; grain production in, 99- • 
100, 102; swine in, 103; biitt^ 
sale, 149. 
Grasses, relation to dairying, 106- • 
107. ■ 

Great Britain. See British agricul- 
ture. 
Great Plains, wheat growing in, 82. 



202 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Green Bay, forest on, 13, 17, 19; 
towns on, 41, 43-44; sawmills, 
130. 

Green Bay (town), fort at, 12, 74; 
early settlement, 23; trail to, 26, 
35, 74, 77-78 ; land office at, 30. 

Green County, geology of, 5; drift- 
less area of, 10; prairies in, 18; 
lead mines, 24, 48; towns in, 43; 
roads, 76 ; native born in, 47 ; 
foreign born, 49, 54; grain pro- 
duction in, 99-100; dairying in, 
152-153. 

Green Lake County, wheat raising 
in, 95, 136. 

Groves, H. D., breeder, 114. 

Guernsey, breed of cattle, 164. 

Gypsum, used on clover, 95. 

"Hambletonian/' blooded horse, 
114. 

Hamilton, William S., lead mine 
pioneer, 41. 

Hard times, among farmers, 90-91. 

Harvest, inventions for, 87-88; 
labor, 87; in 1853, 91. 

Hay, from marshes, 85; increased 
production of, 97; statistics, 101- 
102. 
, Hazel Green, on edge of prairie, 18. 

Hazen, Chester, famous dairyman, 
157. 

Heart Prairie, houses on, 67; home 
of inventor, 88. 

Helena, settlement of, 41. 

Henry, William A., founds the short 
course, 159; dairy school, 160; 
Feeds and Feeding, 160; North- 
ern Wisconsin, 140-145; portrait, 
150. 

Herds, process of improving, 180; 
books for registry, 113. See also 
Cattle. 

Hereford, breed of cattle, 116. 

Herkimer County (N. Y.), dairy- 
men, 155. 

Hibbard, B. H., History of Agri- 
culture in Dane County, 109, 111. 



Hickory trees, in Wisconsin, 17. 

Highland, wheat growing in, 94. 

Hiram Smith Hall, illustration, 160. 

Hinckley, B. M., 155. 

Hoard, William D., program of 
dairy development, 154, 157-159; 
editor, 156; portrait, 150. 

Hogs, in early Wisconsin, 71, 97; 
improvements in breeds, 113, 126- 
129 ; distribution of, 103 ; first ex- 
hibit of, 115. 

Holland, emigrants from, 38, 47, 
57. 

Holstein, breed of cattle, 164, 

Hops, furore for growing, 109. 

Horses, distribution of, 97, 103; 
substitute for oxen, 107; entries 
at state fair, 113 ; breeds of, 117- 
121; breeders, 119. 

Horticultural Society. See Wiscon- 
sin Horticultural Society. 

Hoyt, John W., early agricultural- 
ist, 92, 159; sketch of, 108-109; 
portrait, 107. 

Hudson River, transportation on, 
58-59. 

Hughes, John, Welsh settler, 54. 

Huron Indians, in Wisconsin, 1. 

Illinois, driftless area in, 9; lead 
mines, 24, 31; boundary, 18, 26, 
43; settlers from, 26, 47-48; 
canals in, 32; lumber market, 68, 
132; wheat growing in, 84; horse 
prizes for, 120; source of sheep 
supply, 123. 

Illinois River, tributaries, 32. 

Immigration, state board created, 
140. 

Indiana, settlers from, 47; colony 
in, 57; wheat growing in, 84; 
source of sheep supply, 123. 

Indians, of Wisconsin, 1, 23-24; 
land cessions, 26, 134. 

Interest rates, extortionate, 91. 

Iowa, driftless area in, 9; lead 
mines, 24; lumber market, 68, 
132. 



INDEX 



203 



Iowa County, in driftless area, 10) 
lead mines in, 24; population in 
1836, 27 ; map of, 28 ; native born 
in, 47-48 ; foreign born in, 49, 5i, 
56; grain production, 99-100; 
swine in, 103. 

Irish, in Wisconsin, 38, 45-46, 49, 
51-52, 54, 57. 

Iron County, population of, 145. 

Ixonia, in Jefferson County, 52, 54. 

Jacobson, Edna Louise, aid ac- 
knowledged, xiii; compiles Cen- 
sus of Old Homesteads, 186-193. 

Jackson Coimty, topography of, 3; 
in driftless area, 10; soil of, 144. 

Janesville, settlements near, 33, 69 ; 
roads to, 74, 79; horse prizes for, 
120. 

Jarvis, Consul William, imports 
merino sheep, 113, 122. 

Jefferson County, geology of, 5; 
forested area, 13, 40; farm lands 
in, 31, 79; settled, 33, 36; towns 
in, 43 ; foreign born in, 52-54, 66 ; 
grain production in, 100, 102; 
dairying promoted in, 157. 

Jefferson County Union, influence 
on dairy development, 157. 

Jersey, breed of cattle, 164. 

Jo Daviess County (111.), lead mines 
in, 24. 

Johnston, James, pioneer miner, 26. 

Juneau County, topography of, 3; 
in driftless area, 10; wheat pro- 
duction, 136. 

Kansas, Wisconsin people in, 139. 

Kegonsa Lake, location, 18. 

Kelley, , horse breeder, 119. 

Kellogg, Louise P., aid acknowl- 
edged, xiii ; "Story of Wisconsin," 
23, 80. 

Kenosha, lake port, 32; frame 
houses at, 67; lumber for, 68; 
road to, 76. 

Kenosha County, forested area, 13; 
prairies in, 18; settlements, 33, 



37, 77 ; established, 33 ; towns in, 
43; density of population, 44; 
native bom in, 48-49; foreign 
born, 56; houses in, 67; improved 
lands in 1850, 86; livestock, 103, 
114; grain production in, 95, 99- 
100; dairying, 151-152. 

Kentucky, settlers from, 26, 47-48; 
horses, 118-119; wheat growing 
in, 84. 

Kewaunee County, forested area, 
17, 40; soil of, 144; wheat pro- 
duction in 1860, 136. 

Kichtmyer (Kichtneys), Nicholas, 
Kenosha dairyman, 151. 

Kickapoo River, lumbering on, 135. 

Kilbourn, topography of, 3, 8. 

King, F. A., investigates northern 
Wisconsin, 140. 

King, Rufus, "The New York and 
Erie Railroad," 63. 

"King of Cymry," blooded horse, 
117. 

Kirchayn, in Washington County, 
52. 

Kittle, WilUam, The History of the 
Township and Village of Mazo- 
manie, 56. 

Lacher, J. H. A., early taverns and 
stages, 80. 

La Crosse, lumber port, 135; rail- 
way to, 91, 135. 

La Crosse County, in driftless area, 
10; prairie in, 19; foreign bom 
in, 54; soil of, 144; wheat pro- 
duction, 136. 

La Crosse Prairie, location, 19; 
bouses on, 68-69. 

Lafayette, in Monroe County, 56. 

Lafayette County, in driftless area, 
10 ; prairies in, 18 ; lead mines in, 
24; part of Iowa County, 27; 
native bom in, 47-48; foreign 
born, 49, 54, 56; grain produc- 
tion, 99-100; swine in, 103. 



204 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Lakes, inland, 2; formed by gla- 
ciers, 7; none in driftless area, 
11. 

Lands, characteristics, 1-22; classi- 
fication, 27; sales offices, 30; 
clearing methods, 76-77; prices, 
143; improved area in 1850 and 
1860, 86-87; burned over, 142; 
cut over, 142; sale of school, 91. 

Langlade County, forested area, 
141. 

Lathrop, S. P., cited, 114. 

Lawe, John, pioneer lumberman, 68. 

Lead mines, location, 24-27; trails 
in, 25, 74; map of, 25; as a mar- 
ket, 31; markets for, 40; local 
government of, 43; native bom 
in, 48 ; foreign born, 49 ; railroads 
in, 79. See also Grant, Iowa, and 
Lafayette counties. 

Lebanon, in Dodge County, 52. 

Legler, George, dairyman, 153. 

Leicester, breed of hogs, 113, 115. 

Levi, Kate A. Everest, "German 
Immigration to Wisconsin," 52- 
53. 

Liaden trees, in Wisconsin, 17. 

Lisbon, in Waukesha County, 57. 

Liverpool (England), emigrants 
from, 56. 

Livestock, increase of, 97; at first 
state fair, 113; purity of blood, 
113-114; grades improved, 121- 
122, 166. See also Cattle, Hogs, 
Horses, and Sheep. 

Livingston, Chancellor Robert R., 
importer of merinos, 113. 

Local government, in Wisconsin, 
42-43. 

Lodi, on edge of prairie, 18; wheat. 
growing at, 94. 

Loess soil, defined, 7. 

Log cabin, types of, 66, 68. 

Louisiana province, Wisconsin's re- 
lations to, 1. 

Luchsinger, John, on New Glarus, 
50. 



Lumbering, early operations, 17, 22, 
40, 44; by farmers, 39, 67-68, 76, 
130-148; market for farm prod- 
ucts, 44; kinds of woods, 139-140; 
values of, 132-133; market for, 
132; illustrations, 133. 

Lumbermen, emigrated from state, 
139. 

Luxemburg, emigrants from, 53. 

Lyon, Lucius, surveyor, 30. 

McCaslin Mountain, location, 2. 
McCormick, Cyrus, invents reaper, 

88. 
McCormick Reaper Company, 88. 
McKinnon, Captain , importer 

of "King of Cymry," 117. 
McMillan, Morrison, cited, 69. 
Madison, on edge of prairie, 18; 

made the capital, 41 ; road to, 74, 

79; horse prizes for, 120. 
Magdeburg (Germany), emigration 

from, 52. 
Maine, settlers from, 47. 
Manitowoc, sawmill at, 68. 
Manitowoc County, buried forest in, 

13; forested area, 17, 19, 40, 68; 

foreign born in, 47, 52-54; grain 

production in, 100, 102. 
Maple trees, areas of, 13, 16-17, 22. 
Maps: 

United States, 2. 

Wisconsin geological, 4. 

Driftless area, 9. 

Prairie areas, 14-15. 

Forested area, 16. 

Swamp land, 20. 

The lead region, 25. 

Counties in 1836, 28. 

Surveyed section in 1836, 29. 

Moimt Pleasant, 34. 

Township organization, 1848, 42. 

Population in 1850, 48. 

Vermont and New York canals, 
60. 

Lines of communication, 1844, 75. 

The New North, 138. 



INDEX 



205 



Marathon County, driftless area of, 
10; leads in rural population, 
145-146; farm in, 142. 

Marinette County, forested area, 
141. 

Markets, for local customers, 150; 
for cereals, 102; for dairy prod- 
ucts, 149; for American cheese, 
154; city commission merchants, 
151; foreign, 81, 154. 

Marquette County, foreign born in, 
54; Muir farm, 55; soil of, 144; 
oak openings in, 131; wheat pro- 
duction, 136. 

Marsh harvester, value of, 88. 

Marsh land, amount of, 7 ; areas, 17, 
19, 35; map of, 20. 

Martin, Lawrence, The Physical 
Geography of Wisconsin, 13, 22. 

Maryland, wheat growing in, 84. 

Massachusetts, settlers from, 47; 
pioneer life in, 65. 

Mazomanie, English colony at, 56; 
horse prizes for, 120. 

Menominee Indians, in Wisconsin, 
1; land cession, 134. 

Mequon, in Ozaukee County, 52. 

Merinos, imported, 113; illustra- 
tions, 117, 124. 

Merk, Frederick, Economic History, 
109. 

Meyer, Balthaser H., "Railway 
Legislation," 41 ; home of, 174. 

Meyer, Casper Henry, portrait, 53. 

Michigan, settlers from, 47. 

Michigan Lake, as a boundary, 1, 
18, 26, 43; forests on, 13, 68; 
lumbering, 132; ports, 31, 33, 80; 
transportation on, 63. 

Michigan Territory, Wisconsin a 
part of, 30. 

Military Ridge, location of, 12-13, 
74; prairies near, 18, 79. 

Mills, in early Wisconsin, 39; at 
Whitewater, 67; on lake shore, 
68; grist, 71-72; saw, 130, 133; 
sites for, 73. 



Milwaukee, location, 31; enterprise, 
32; land office at, 35, 67, 72; as 
a port, 39, 50, 53, 69, 78; foreign 
born at, 53; lumber for, 68; cen- 
ter for roads, 74, 79; dairy mar- 
ket, 151. 

Milwaukee and Mississippi Railway, 
built, 41-42, 91 ; value of, 135. 

Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, 
projected, 32, 37. 

Milwaukee County, forested area, 
13, 78; boundary, 33; original 
area, 27-28; farm lands in, 30, 
78; foreign born in, 37-38, 40, 47, 
53-55, 57; towns in, 43; density 
of population, 44; grain produc- 
tion, 99, 102; dairying in, 152. 

Milwaukee River, settlement on, 52. 

Mineral Point, mining town, 26; 
land office at, 30; road to, 74, 76. 

Mining region, settlement, 24-27. 
See also Lead Mines. 

Minnesota, driftless area in, 9 ; Wis- 
consin people in, 139. 

Mississippi River, as a boundary, 
1-2, 18; erosion, 10-11; prairies 
on, 19; steamboats on, 26, 41; 
transportation on, 31-32, 135; 
lumbering on, 44, 68 ; pineries on, 
132. 

Mississippi Valley, lumber market, 
132. 

Missouri, settlers from, 26, 48 ; lum- 
ber market, 68, 132. 

Mitchell, Alexander, financial pio- 
neer, 55. 

Mohawk River, transportation on, 
59. 

Mohawk valley, settlers from, 65. 

Monroe County, topography of, 3; 
in driftless area, 10; foreign bom 
in, 54; soil of, 144; wheat pro- 
duction in, 136. 

Morgan, line of blooded horses, 117- 
118, 121. 

Morrill Law, for agricultural col- 
leges, 159. 



206 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Mortgage, indebtedness, 91. 

Motor car, effect on good roads, 
179. 

Mount Pleasant Town, settled, 33- 
37; map of land entries, 34; for- 
eign born in, 54, 167; improved 
lands in 1850, 85; grain produc- 
tion, 93, 99; sheep raised in, 124. 

Muir, John, The Story of My Boy- 
hood and Youth, 55, 173; homes 
of, 66, 174. 

Murray, George, stock breeder, 55, 
116-117, 119. 

Museoda (English Prairie), trail to, 
26, 41; wheat in, 94; board of 
trade, 156. 

Music, Welsh contributions, 55. 

Nashotah, Episcopal seminary at, 
57. 

Natesta, Henry, home of, 168. 

Neapolitan, breed of hogs, 115. 

Nebraska, Wisconsin people in, 139. 

Necedah Hill, location, 3. 

New Diggings, mining town, 26. 

New England, settlers from, 37, 47- 
49, 57-64; pioneer days in, 64-65; 
wheat growers in, 84; surplus 
dairy products, 154. 

New Glarus, colony of Swiss, 49-50, 
54; wheat growing in, 94; church 
at, 59. 

New Hampshire, pioneer days in, 
65-66. 

New Jersey, settlers from, 58. 

New North, region defined, 137; 
map of, 138; population at sev- 
eral censuses, 136-137, 139, 145; 
farming conditions in, 137, 147; 
foreign born in, 146 ; native born, 
139. See also Northern Wiscon- 
sin. 

New York, settlers from, 37, 52, 54, 
57-64, 69, 78; farm lands in, 30, 
62-63; statistics of settlers from, 
47-48; pioneer days in, 65; wheat 
growing, 84; influence on dairy 
progress, 154-155. 



New York Board of Agriculture, 

Reports, 155. 
Newton, John W., dairyman, 153. 
Newton, in Manitowoc County, 54; 

wheat growing in, 94. 
Niagara limestone, location, 3-5. 
Nikima, in Fond du Lac County, 54. 
North Carolina, settlers from, 48. 
North Dakota, Wisconsin people in, 

139. 
Northern Wisconsin, oak openings 

in, 131; agricultural conditions, 

133-134; wheat growing in, 95. 

See also New North and Old 

N^orth. 
Northern Wisconsin Agricultural 

Association, Transactions, 147. 
Norway, in Racine County, 50-51, 

54; wool growing in, 125. 
Norwegians, in Wisconsin, 47, 50- 

51, 79, 141, 145. 

Oak Grove, cheese factory at, 156. 

Oak trees, areas of, 13, 16-17 ; open- 
ings described, 17; location, 18; 
advantages of, 85. 

Oats, as incidental crop, 85; in- 
creased production of, 97; range, 
100-101 ; table of production, 102. 

Ohio, settlers from, 47-49, 58, 63, 
69; improved land in 1850, 87; 
wheat growing in, 84; surplus 
dairy products, 154. 

Okee, horse prizes for, 120. 

Old Lutherans, in Wisconsin, 52. 

Old North, area defined, 136 ; popu- 
lation statistics, 136-137. See also 
Northern Wisconsin. 

Oneida County (N. Y.) forested 
area in, 141; dairymen, 155. 

Ontario County (N. Y.), dairymen 
in, 155. 

Openings. See Oak trees and Prai- 
ries. 

Oshkosh, settlement, 40 ; wheat crop 
in, 93; headquarters of Northern 
Wisconsin Agricultural Associa- 
tion, 147. 



INDEX 



207 



Ottawa (111.), Norwegians at, 50. 

Ottawa (Wis.), in Waukesha Coun- 
ty, 54. 

Outagamie County, forested area, 
13; oak openings in, 131; soil of, 
144; wheat growing in, 136. 

Owen, Robert Dale, communist, 57. 

Owenite community, in Wisconsin, 
57. 

Ozaukee County, forested area, 13, 
17, 38, 40; foreign bom in, 52- 
53; grain production in, 102. 

Panic of 1837, effect on settlement, 
31. 

Paper towns, in early Wisconsin, 
40. 

Paris (Kenosha Co.), dairy prod- 
ucts, 151. 

Pekatonica River, topography of, 
12. 

Peneplain, in Wisconsin, 6. 

Pennsylvania, settlers from, 47-48, 
52, 58, 69 ; improved land in 1850, 
87; wheat growing in, 84. 

Penokee Range, location, 2. 

Pepin County, forested area, 17; 
soil of, 144; wheat growing in, 
136. 

Percheron, breed of horses, 120. 

Pheil, Richard, horse breeder, 119. 

Philipp, Emanuel, birthplace, 50. 

Phillips, Laura J., "Colonization 
of Wisconsin by the Welsh," 54. 

Pickard, Josiah L., school superin- 
tendent, 80. 

Pierce County, geology of, 5; for- 
ested area, 17; soil of, 144; wheat 
growing in, 136. 

Pigs. See Hogs. 

Pike River, lands on, 35-36. 

Pine trees, areas of, 13, 16-17, 19, 
21-22, 68, 131; durabUity of 
stumps, 143. 

Pineries, effect on settlement, 21 ; on 
Lake Michigan, 68; on inland 
rivers, 68; work in, 130; illustra- 
tion, 132. See also Lumbering. 



Pink eye, horse disease, 90. 
Pishtaka River. See Fox River of 

the Illinois. 
Pittsfield (Mass.), county fairs 

originate in, 113. 
Platteville, mining town, 26. 
Pleasant Prairie (Kenosha Co.), 

dairy products, 151-152. 
Pleasant Springs, in Dane Coiinty, 

51, 94; wheat crops in, 93. 
Plymouth, census figures, 37, 54; 

wlieat crops in, 94. 
Polk County, forested area, 17; soil 

of, 144; farm in, 175. 
Population. See Wisconsin. 
Pork, marketing, 107, 110. See 

also Hogs. 
Portage, fort at, 12, 74; foreign 

born, 54. 
Portage County, topography, 3; 

driftless area of, 10; population 

in 1860, 134. 
Potawatomi Indians, in Wisconsin, 

1. 
Powers, D. J., cited, 69. 
Prairie du Chien, road to, 12, 74; 

early settlement, 23, 27; railroad 

to, 91. 
Prairie du Sac, settled, 41. 
Prairies, in southern Wisconsin, 12, 

18-19, 21-22, 35; maps of, 14-15; 

origin of, 13 ; importance of, 139 ; 

breaking of, 91. 
Price, P. A., dairyman, 153. 
Primrose, wheat growing in, 94. 

QuAiFE^ M. M., aid acknowledged, 
37. 

Racine^ lake port, 32-33, 69; pio- 
neer, 55; lumber for, 68; road to, 
76, 79; wheat market, 85. 

Racine Argus, cited, 32. 

Racine County, forested area, 13; 
prairies in, 18; farm lands, 31; 
improved land in 1850, 86; early 
settlements, 32-37, 77; towns in, 
43; density of population, 44; 



208 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



native born in, 47-48; foreign 
born in, 50, 54-56; houses in, 67; 
grain production, 95, 99-100; 
livestock, 103, 116; dairying, 152. 

Railways, importance of, 41-42, 63, 
78-79; laborers for, 51; buUding 
of, 91. 

Randall (Kenosha Co.), dairy prod- 
ucts of, 152. 

Randolph, in Columbia County, 54. 

Reaping machines, 88. 

Red Cedar River, lumbering on, 
132. 

Red Cedar valley, survey in, 135. 

Rhinelander, center of immigration 
activity, 140. 

Rib Hill, location, 2. 

Richards, Griffith, Welsh settler, 54- 
55; horse prizes for, 121; por- 
trait, 52. 

Richards, Richard, stock breeder, 
55, 115-116; horse breeder, 119; 
prizes, 120-121 ; portrait, 125. 

Richland County, in driftless area, 
10; forested area, 17; settlements 
in, 42, 79; native bom in, 47; 
foreign born, 49. 

Ridge fields, described, 12; wheat 
grown on, 94. 

Ripon, on edge of prairie, 18. 

Ripon College, candidate for agri- 
cultural college grant, 159. 

Roads, on ridge lands, 12, 73; mili- 
tary, 12, 18, 41, 74, 79 ; in mining 
region, 26; Chicago-Green Bay, 
35, 74, 77; conditions of, 73-76; 
plank, 76, 79. 

Robbins, J. V., dairyman, 153. 

Roberts, William G., wheat grower, 
93. 

Rochester (N. T.), Norwegians at, 

50. 
Rochester (Wis.), settlement, 32; 
road to, 79; wool market, 125. 

Rock County, geology of, 5 ; prairies 
in, 18; settlements, 33, 37; towns 
in, 43-44; roads, 76; native born 
in, 47-48; foreign born, 50, 54- 



56; improved land in 1850, 86; 

grain production, 99, 102; rank 

in several grains, 95, 100. 
Rock Prairie, location, 18; early 

wheat crop on, 85. 
Rock River, transportation via, 31- 

32 ; settlements on, 33, 36, 40, 80 ; 

marketing from, 41; ferry on, 74. 
Roe, John P., exhibitor, 115; owner 

of shorthorns, 116. 
Rosendale, in Fond du Lac County, 

54. 
Rural churches, conditions of pros- 
perity, 171-172. 
Rural New Yorker, farm journal, 

155. 
Rural population, increase of, 181; 

in New North, 146. 
Rural schools, influence of, 173- 

174; in northern Wisconsin, 148. 
Rush Lake, settlement on, 38. 
Russell, Harry L., bacteriological 

tests, 160. 
Rutland County (Vt.), farms in, 

59. 
Rye, region of production, 102. 

St. Croix County, geology, 5; 
prairie in, 19; soil of, 144; grain 
production in, 95, 100, 136-137. 

St. Croix valley, survey in, 135; 
lumbering in, 132. 

St. Louis, lead mine metropolis, 26, 
32. 

St. Peter sandstone, location, 5, 10- 
11. 

Salem (Kenosha Co.), dairy prod- 
ucts, 152. 

Sauk County, driftless area of, 10; 
forested area, 17; settlements in, 
42, 79; foreign born, 50, 53; 
grain production, 100, 102 ; dairy- 
ing, 153. 

Sauk Indians, in Wisconsin, 1. 

Sausage grinder, illustration, 169. 

Sawmills. See Mills. 

Saxony, emigrants from, 53. 



INDEX 



209 



Scandinavians, in Wisconsin, 47, 
50-51. 

Schoolhouses, in Wisconsin, 80; il- 
lustration, 73. 

School lands. See Lands. 

Schools. See Rural schools. 

Scotch, in Wisconsin, 46, 50, 55-57. 

Scott, in Columbia County, 54. 

Self binders. See Binders. 

Shawano County, forested area, 141. 

Sheboygan, lumber port, 67; saw- 
mUl at, 68. 

Sheboygan County, forested area, 
13, 17, 40, 68 ; density of popula- 
tion, 44; foreign born in, 52-53, 
57; grain production in, 100, 102. 

Sheboygan Falls, population 
changes, 178. 

Sheep, mcreased production of, 97; 
derivation of early flocks, 107, 
123 ; entries at first state fair, 
113; breeds, 114; distribution, 
103; purebreds, 124; numbers, 
107, 124; decline of raising, 126; 
illustration, 117. See also Wool. 

Sherman, in Sheboygan County, 52. 

Shire, breed of horses, 120. 

Shorthorn, breed of cattle, 113, 
115; source of, 114; prices, 117; 
breeding of, 116. 

Shot tower, on Wisconsin River, 41. 

Showerman, Grant, A Country 
Chronicle, \11. 

Shull, Jesse W., pioneer miner, 26. 

Shullsburg, mining town, 26. 

Silo, a French invention, 158; in- 
crease of, 158. 

Simmons, James, Annals of Lake 
Gemeva, 73. 

Singing schools, community affairs, 
174-175. 

Sioux Indians, in Wisconsin, 1. 

Six Nations Indians, in Wisconsin, 
1. 

Smith, Hiram, dairyman, 155. 

Smith, Leonard S., The Water Pow- 
ers of Wisconsin, 22. 



Soils, character of, 21; in northern 
Wisconsin, 143. 

Somers (Kenosha Co.), dairy prod- 
ucts, 151-152. 

Sorghum, production of, 109-110; 
effect of Civil War on, 110; de- 
cline of, 110; occasional revival, 
111. 

South Dakota, Wisconsin people in, 
139. 

Southdowns, importations of, 113. 

Spanish, in the lead mines, 24. 

Speculation, in Wisconsin lands, 30- 
3L 

"Spring house," illustration, 151. 

Spring Prairie (Kenosha County), 
settled, 33; dairying in, 157. 

Springvale, in Columbia County, 54. 

Stage routes, in Wisconsin, 80. 

Starin, Frederick J., diary, 65, 67, 
77. 

State Agricultural Society. See 
Wisconsin State Agricultural So- 
ciety. 

State Board of Immigration. See 
Immigration. 

Stavangar (Norway), emigration 
from, 50. 

Stevens Point, topography of, 3, 8. 

Stilson, Eli, wheat grower, 93. 

Stock breeding, beginnings of, 55, j 
71. See also Cattle, Hogs, Horses, 
and Sheep. 

Storekeepers, bought dairy prod- 
ucts, 149; social function of, 177. 

Stoughton, location, 18 ; horse prizes 
for, 120. 

Stumping. See Lands. 

Sub-earth vault, for curing cheese, 
158. 

Suburban farmers, 177-178. 

Suffolk, breed of swine, 113; illus- 
tration, 124. 

Sugar Creek, in Walworth County, 
54; wheat raising in, 94; sheep, 
124. 



210 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Sun Prairie, on edge of prairie, 18; 

pioneers at, 69-70. 
Sunday, working customs, 170-171. 
Superior, population, 144. 
Superior Lake, as a boundary, 1; 

lumbering near, 44; soils, 144; 

agriculture near, 144. 
Surveys, in Wisconsin, 27-30; in 

northern Wisconsin, 134-135; for 

railways, 42. 
Susquehanna River, transportation 

on, 59. 
Swamps. See Marsh land. 
Swedes, in Wisconsin, 47, 51, 145. 
"Swigert," thoroughbred horse, 120; 

illustration, 125. 
Swine. See Hogs. 
Swiss, in Wisconsin, 47, 49-50, 53- 

54; as dairymen, 163. 

Taverns^ in Wisconsin, 80; illus- 
tration, 73. 

Tennessee, settlers from, 47; wheat 
growing in, 84. 

Thomas, L. G., early cheese maker, 
155. 

Thompson, John Giffin, Wheat 
Growing, 81, 95-96. 

Threshing, changes in method of, 
89. 

Thwaites, Reuben G., Wisconsin, 
23, 26; "Notes on Early Lead 
Mining," 26. 

Tobacco, cultivation of, 109. 

Tourists, in northern Wisconsin, 
148. 

Towns, technical definition, xi, 42; 
surveyed, 27; Domesday Book 
studies of, 167. 

Trails. See Roads. 

Transportation, by inland water- 
ways, 21, 32, 41, 58-59, 61; rail- 
ways, 41-42; in pioneer days, 73- 
76. 

Trempealeau County, in driftless 
area, 10; prairie in, 19; soil of, 
144; grain production in, 95, 100, 
136. 



Trempealeau valley, surveyed, 135. 

Trimble, William, "Historical As- 
pects of Surplus Food Produc- 
tion," 82. 

Tripp, Dr. James, at Whitewater, 
72. 

Troy (N. Y.), as a market, 59. 

Troy Lake, settlements near, 33. 

Tuttle, A. G., letter of, 130. 

Two Rivers, sawmill at, 68. 

United States Geological Survey, 

charts, 33. 
Utley, William L., Iiorse breeder, 

119. 

Vanderpoel, Abram, letter, 32. 
Vermont, settlers from, 37, 47-48, 

58-64, 78; agriculture in, 59-62; 

pioneer days in, 65; sheep from, 

114. 
Vernon County, geology of, 5; in 

driftless area, 10; prairie in, 18; 

grain production, 100. 
Verwyst, C. A., "Reminiscences of 

a Pioneer Missionary," 57. 
Virginia, settlers from, 47-48 ; wheat 

growing in, 84. 

Walnut trees, in Wisconsin, 17. 

Walworth County, prairies in, 18; 
farm lands, 31 ; settlements, 33, 
37, 67; towns, 43; native born, 
48-49; foreign born, 49, 56; 
houses in, 67; roads in, 76; grain 
production, 95, 99-100, 102; dairy- 
ing in, 152; sheep raising, 102, 
124. 

Warren, Emory F., Sketches of the 
History of Chautauque County, 
62. 

Washington County, forested area, 
40; roads in, 76; foreign born, 
37-38, 47, 53; grain production, 
102. 

Water power, in Wisconsin, 21; 
effect on settlement, 30; need for 
mill operation, 72. 



INDEX 



21 



Watertowii, settlement, 40; foreign 
born in, 5i; market days at, 157. 

Watson, Elkanah, originator of 
county fairs, 113; portrait, 106. 

Waukesha County, forested area, 
13, 40; farm lauds in, 30; settle- 
ments, 33, 3G, 79; towns in, 43; 
foreign born, 50-51, 53-57 ; houses, 
67; grain production, 100, 102; 
sheep raising, 103. 

Waunakee, on edge of prairie, 18. 

Waupaca County, geology, 3; soil 
of, 144 ; oak openings, 131 ; wheat 
raising, 136. 

Waushara County, topography of, 
3; foreign born in, 54; soil of, 
144; wheat raising in, 144. 

Webster, Daniel, buys Wisconsin 
land, 30. 

Welsh, in Wisconsin, 46, 49-50, 54- 
56. 

West Indies, market for wheat, 82. 

Western states, supplied export 
wheat, 84. 

Wheat, favorable locations for, 12, 
91, 93; production of, 81-96; 
acreages, 85; harvesting, 87; 
prices, 85, 90; average consump- 
tion, 81 ; crops, 1837, 84-85 ; 1839, 
81; 18^9, 82; 1860, 92; crop fail- 
ures, 90, 92; decline of produc- 
tion, 97 ; table of production, 102 ; 
marketing, 36, 41, 68, 80-82, 89- 
90; foreign exports, 82. 

Wheatland (Kenosha Co.), dairy 
products, 152. 

Wheeler, R. M., owner of "Ham- 
bletonian," 114. 

Whitbeek, Ray H., monographs, 22. 

White, W. C, Kenosha dairyman, 
151. 

Whitehall (N. Y.), terminus of 
canal, 59. 

Whitewater, settled, 33, 37, 67; for- 
eign born in, 51, 167; lumber for, 
67-68; goods, 69; gristmill at, 72- 
73; land breaking, 77; road to. 



79; sheep in, 124; first house in, 
67. 

Whitney, Daniel, pioneer merchant, 
41 ; lumberman, 132. 

Wilcox, AVilliam, home of, 67. 

Wilder, C. H., cited, 154. 

^^■ilIard, Josiah F., cited, 42. 

Williams, Charles H., stock breeder, 
55; exhibitor, 116. 

Winnebago County, forested area, 
13 ; foreign bom in, 52, 54, 57 ; 
grain production, 100. 

Winnebago Indians, in Wisconsin, 
1. 

Winnebago Lake, forests on, 17; 
prairies, 18, 77; towns on, 41, 43. 

Winslow, John B., Story of a Great 
Court, 73. 

Wisconsin, physiography, 1-22; 
population in 1850, 48; early 
settlements, 23-44; immigrants, 
45-64; pioneer days in, 65-80. 
See also New North, Northern 
Wisconsin, and Old North. 

Wisconsin Dairymen's Association, 
organized, 157. 

Wisconsin Domesday Book, 167. 

Wisconsin Farmer and NortJnvest- 
ern Cultivator, begun, 107, 111; 
purpose, 108; editors, 107-108; 
effect of agricultural journals, 
109. 

Wisconsin Geological Survey, aid 
acknowledged, 2, 4, 9, 14-16, 20; 
bulletins, 22, 2-4. 

Wisconsin River, topography of, 3, 
5, 8; as a boundary, 17, 42; ero- 
sion of, 10-11; towns on, 41, 79; 
lumbering on, 4i, 68, 130, 132; 
trail to, 74. 

^Visconsin State Agricultural So- 
ciety, organized, 104-106; reports 
summarized, 105-106; secretary, 
108; Transactions, 42, 69, 114, 
137. 

Wisconsin State Board of Immigra- 
tion. See Immigration. 



212 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY BOOK 



Wisconsin State Horticultural So- 
ciety, organized, 165. 

Wisconsin State Land Office, ma- 
terials in, 30. 

Wisconsin University. See College 
of Agriculture. 

Wolf River, pinery on, 130. 

Wood, J. T., Baraboo exhibitor, 118. 

Wood County, topography of, 3; 
driftless area of, 10. 



Wool, production of, 97, 122-126; 
market for, 123. See also Sheep. 
"Worm" fence, illustration, 169. 
Wyocena, in Columbia County, 54. 

Yorkshire^ breed of swine, 113. 
Yorkshire (England), emigrants 
from, 49. 

ZiNC^ mines of, 24. 



WISCONSIN DOMESDAY i 



_GtN£RAL STUDIES. VOL- '. PLATE 



KELIEF MAP ^ ^ 
OF Y 

WISCONSIN 

'A History of Agriculture in Wisconsin" 

BY JOSEPH SCHAFER 




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